Research Methods

Thesis/Project Study I
CE Project 1

Module 1

MODULE 1
Research problems and objectives
Overview
Before you start any form of study, get a clear understanding of what a research problem is and learn to
formulate it properly. After defining it, you can start writing your paper. It means that research problems or
questions are the fuel driving the entire scientific process and they serve as the foundation of any
experimental design or method, from case studies to real experiments.
Why does it matter to researchers? It’s an important problem that you state in your research paper to define
your specific study area and provide a brief synopsis of how you develop a hypothesis. The quality of a
research problem defines your success.

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this module, the student is expected to:
 Formulate a research Problem and Objectives
 Choose a paradigm suited to your research
 Present a research “Title Proposal”.

Discussion

I- Developing Research Problem and objectives

Formulating your Research Problem
Before you start any form of study, get a clear understanding of what a research problem is and learn to
formulate it properly. After defining it, you can start writing your paper. It means that research problems or
questions are the fuel driving the entire scientific process and they serve as the foundation of any
experimental design or method, from case studies to real experiments.
Why does it matter to researchers? It’s an important problem that you state in your research paper to define
your specific study area and provide a brief synopsis of how you develop a hypothesis. The quality of a
research problem defines your success.
What is a research problem?
It’s a clear and definite statement or expression about your chosen area of concern, a difficulty to eliminate,
a condition to improve, or a troubling problem that exists in theory, literature, and practice. A research
problem indicates a need for its meaningful investigation. It doesn’t state how to do something and a
researcher shouldn’t present a value question or offer a broad research proposal.
A research problem is a statement about an area of concern, a condition to be improved, a difficulty to be
eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or in practice that points to
the need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation. In some social science disciplines the
research problem is typically posed in the form of a question. A research problem does not state how to do
something, offer a vague or broad proposition, or present a value question.
The purpose of a problem statement is to:
Introduce the reader to the importance of the topic being studied. The reader is oriented to the significance
of the study and the research questions or hypotheses to follow.
Places the problem into a particular context that defines the parameters of what is to be investigated.
Provides the framework for reporting the results and indicates what is probably necessary to conduct the
study and explain how the findings will present this information.
How to identify a research problem?
After choosing a specific topic for your academic paper, you need to state it as a clear research problem
that identifies all the issues that you’ll address. It’s not always simple for students to formulate it. In some
fields, they may end up spending a lot of time thinking, exploring, and studying before getting a clear idea
of what research questions to answer.
Some research paper topics are too broad to give a researchable issue. For example, if you decide to study
certain social issues, like child poverty, remember that they don’t provide any researchable question. These
are very broad to address and take a lot of time and resources to become unfeasible so that your study will
lack enough focus and depth.
What is a statement of a research problem?
An adequate statement of your research problem plays an important role in the success of your academic
paper and study. It’s possible to generate a number of researchable issues from the same subject because
there are many issues that may arise out of it. Your study should pursue only one in detail.
Basic characteristics of research problem
 For your research problem to be effective, make sure that it has these basic characteristics:
 Reflecting on important issues or needs;
 Basing on factual evidence (it’s non-hypothetical);
 Being manageable and relevant;
  Suggesting a testable and meaningful hypothesis (avoiding useless answers).
 Formulating your research problem with ease
Formulating your research problem enables you to make a purpose of your study clear to yourself and
target readers. Focus your paper on providing relevant data to address it. A problem statement is an
effective and essential tool to keep you on track with research and evaluate it. How can you formulate a
powerful research problem? Consider 5 ways to formulate the research problem:
 Specify your research objectives;
 Review its context or environment;
 Explore its nature;
 Determine variable relationships;
 Anticipate the possible consequences of alternative approaches.
Specific research objectives
A clear statement that defines all objectives can help you conduct and develop effective and meaningful
research. They should be manageable to bring you success. A few goals will help you keep your study
relevant. This statement also helps professor’s evaluation the questions your research project answers and
different methods that you use to address them.
Review the context of your research problem
It’s necessary to work hard to define and test all kinds of environmental variables to make your project
successful. Why do you need to do that? This step can help you define if the important findings of your
study will deliver enough data to be worth considering. Identify specific environmental variables that may
potentially affect your research and start formulating effective methods to control all of them.
Why explore the nature of your research problem?
Research problems may range from simple to complex, and everything depends on a range of variables
and their relationships. Some of them can be directly relevant to specific research questions, while others
are completely unimportant for your project.

Why should you understand their nature? This knowledge enables you to develop effective solutions. To
get a deep understanding of all dimensions, think about focus groups and other relevant details to provide
the necessary insight into a particular question.
Determine variable relationships
Scientific, social, and other studies often focus on creating a certain sequence of repeating behaviors over
time. What does your project entail? Completing the entire process involves:
 Identifying the variables that affect possible solutions to your research problem;
 Deciding on the degree to which you can use and control all of them for study purposes;
 Determining functional relationships between existing variables;
 Choose the most critical variables for a solution of your research problem.
During the formulation stage, it’s necessary to consider and generate as many potential approaches and
variable relationships as you can.
What are the consequences of alternative approaches?
There are different consequences that each course of action or approach can bring, and that’s why you
need to anticipate them. Why communicate possible outcomes? It’s a primary goal of any research
process.
Structuring your research problem
Look at scientific papers to notice their research questions because they are crucial for determining the
quality of answers, methods, and findings. Quantitative designs use deductive reasoning to state a testable
hypothesis. Qualitative methods use inductive reasoning to make a strong statement of your future thesis.
Tips for defining your research problem
You need to formulate it during the initial stage of a scientific process or study. For instance, literature
reviews, research, and studies of previous experiments are likely to provide you with vague areas of
interest. Look at the area that brings interesting results. Make sure that it has a potential for exploring.
Think about reviewing a successful experiment and try to disagree with its results, methodology, and tests,
define the entire process, and retest its hypothesis.
The importance of revising
Get useful feedback from teachers, students, and other people to successful revise your research question.
A final decision is always up to you. Feel free to decide which advice is helpful. Take the following details
into account to simplify this process:
 Agreement among readers that a research problem is very broad;
 Suggestions that you have a certain misunderstanding of the chosen matter;
 Advice for narrowing your subject down or thinking of a better way to focus it;
 Specifics about your misunderstanding;
  A consensus that your research question is very narrow and interesting ideas to make it more
general;
 Comments about its clarity and phrasing.
After revising your initial research problem, its possible solutions, and above-mentioned details, you’re
ready to write a formal version.
Do you have a good research problem?
Do a simple self-test to determine whether it’s good enough for your scientific project and make sure that:
Your question allows for a number of potential answers;
 It’s testable, flexible, and open-ended;
 You have the evidence necessary to address it;
 It’s possible to break it into resolvable parts;
 It’s precise and clear;
 You don’t use any vague terms that require definitions;
 It’s suitable for the length of your paper;
 You can explain why your solutions matter;
 You made premises explicit.
What should a formal version be like?
Any research starts with a problem that you derive from the topic that attracts your attention after general
reading, classroom discussions, etc. Most instructors prefer to set general topics. To formulate a powerful
research problem and impress them, it should be:
 Interesting;
 Relevant;
 Specific and focused;
 Researchable.
Your question should have enough bearing on a given topic and stay within the limits set by your
professors in advance. Pick an interesting subject to stimulate your motivation. It shouldn’t be very vague or
broad. If your research question is broad, you can make it more specific by specific aspects, time periods,
or events. There shouldn’t be more than a few possible answers
Get a clear insight into available materials. Visit local and academic libraries to find relevant and updated
databases, books, magazines, journals, and other sources of information. Your research problem may
seem doable at the very beginning. Do your preliminary sources to test it and find enough data.
Expert assistance: benefits of hiring professional writers
The above-stated methods and tips can help you formulate a great research problem for any project. If you
face different challenges, such as a lack of time or skills, don’t hesitate to get thesis writing help. Expert
writers can help you with all academic tasks. They have the skills, experience, and knowledge necessary to
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The rationale
The rationale of your research is the reason for conducting the study. The rationale should answer the need
for conducting the said research. Rationale describes the underlying basis for the study, and Specific Aims
list exactly what you propose to do. That is why it is also referred to as the justification of  the study. Ideally,
your research should be structured as observation, rationale, hypothesis, objectives, methods, results and
conclusions.
To write your rationale, you should first write a background on what all research has been done on your
study topic. Follow this with ‘what is missing’ or ‘what are the open questions of the study’. Identify the gaps
in the literature and emphasize why it is important to address those gaps. This will form the rationale of
your study. The rationale should be followed by a hypothesis and objectives.

II-What is Research Paradigm 

A research paradigm is an approach or a model or a pattern to conduct research. It is a framework of
thoughts or beliefs or understandings within which theories and practices operate. It acts as a function of
how a researcher thinks about the development of knowledge. In simple words, a research paradigm is a
process of creating a blueprint of research.
A research paradigm is of three types-

Ontology– Ontology is a belief about reality. Ontology believes that either a single reality exists or it does
not exist. To be more specific, ontology answers one question- “What is a reality”. For example, consider
the question “Does God exist”. Now, there can be two realities (or ontologies) to this question. First is “Yes,
God exists” and second is “No, God does not exist”
Epistemology– Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemology is concerned with all aspects of the
validity, scope and methods of acquiring knowledge, such as a) what constitutes a knowledge claim; b) how
can knowledge be acquired or produced, and c) how the extent of its transferability can be assessed.
Epistemology answers one question – “How can we know reality”. For example, consider the question
“How do you know whether God exists or not”.
Research Methodology– It refers to general principles that underline how one investigates the social world
and how one demonstrates that the knowledge generated is valid. The question addressed in methodology
is “How to go about in finding the reality/ answer”. In general, research methodology is used to create a
process of how to collect and analyze the data for research

Research Philosophy together with research methodology create a research paradigm

Research philosophy is defined as the development of research assumption, its knowledge, and
nature. Research philosophy presents the nature of the research, the type of data associated with its, the
understanding of the sources of the data and theoretical approaches to analyze it.
“Ontology and epistemology are two ways of viewing a research philosophy” .
There are four major types of research philosophies-

 Positivism (Objectivism) – Positivists believe that there is a single reality which can be measured
and known. Therefore, quantitative methods are used to measure this reality. Positivism in
research is a philosophy that is closely associated with the idea of fact-based investigation. A
research-based on positivism philosophy follows a rigorous method of systematic investigation of
data sources. It believes that only “factual” knowledge gained through observation including
measurement is reliable. In positivism, the role of the researcher is limited to data collection and
interpretation. It depends on quantifiable observations that lead to statistical analyses. In
positivism-based researches, a hypothesis is proposed which is proved using statistical analysis of
data. The data here is collected through questionnaires (primary analysis) or is collected through
existing data sources (secondary analysis). Here the relationship between two variables is
established and the reason for relationship or answer to “WHY” is not found since positivism
believes in the existence of a single reality. For example- Is there any significant relationship
between employee performance and employee compensation.
 Interpretivism (Subjectivism/ Constructivism) -The term interpretivism refers to the ways via which
one can gain knowledge of the world, which loosely relies on interpreting or understanding the
meanings that humans attach to their actions. It does not believe in a single relative but is based
on the existence of multiple realities. Thus, it uses qualitative methods to reach those multiple
realities. Interpretivism integrates human interest into a study and assumes that access to reality
(or realities) is only through social constructions such as language, consciousness, shared
meanings, and instruments. Thus, here data is collected through interviews and talking to people s
that different perspectives (different realities) of people can be analyzed. So, it is important for the
researcher as a social actor to appreciate differences between people thereby using qualitative
analysis. Here the emphasis is laid on finding an answer to “WHY” and unlike positivism, it is not
 merely focused on establishing a relationship between existing variables. For example- why are the
employees in an organization not able to adapt to the new training system. Further, interpretivism
can be biased since it is based on individual believes and experiences.
 Pragmatism– Pragmatism philosophy is dependent on the research question. It believes that the
philosophy to be used in research is selected based on the research question. Pragmatics can
combine both, positivism and interpretivism positions within the scope of single research according
to the nature of the research question. It is a problem-oriented philosophy that takes the view that
the best research methods are those that help to most effectively answer the research question.
This then involves a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods used to evaluate different aspects
of a research problem.
Further, to decide on the research paradigm, research methodology is to be decided as well. The research
methodology includes specific procedures or techniques to analyze the data collected for the research. A
research methodology includes-
 The approach used in research that is inductive, deductive or abductive
 The method employed is quantitative qualitative or mixed. It included both data collection method
and analysis method
 Validity and reliability of research

Example of Paradigm

Paradigm 1
Paradigm 2

Paradigm 3
 Assessment Task
1. Formulate 3 research Problem
2. Make a Rationale for each of the problem
3. Make an objective out of that problem (at least 3)
4. Choose a paradigm suited to your research

References

Makombe, G. (2017). “An expose of the relationship between paradigm, method and design in research.”
The Qualitative Report, 22(12), 3363-3382. Retrieved from http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol22/iss12/18
Shah, S. R. and Abdullah A. (2013). “Research Paradigms: Researchers’ Worldviews, Theoretical
Frameworks and Study Designs.” Arab World English Journal, 4(4), 252-264.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bc4f/721cbff0e745116f3884bd5a27b605d172d3.pdf
[Original source: https://prothesiswriter.com/blog/how-to-formulate-research-problem]

Goodluck!