Doing Research Part 2 of 6: Defining a Research Problem
Defining a research problem has to be one of the most difficult parts of the research process. How do you determine if your topic is “researchable?” What makes a project a research project? What does it mean to define a research problem? It doesn’t matter your level of training — from students to faculty, organizations to governments — defining a problem is difficult, but like scaling a mountain, it is not impossible.
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This post will give you the tools to transform your idea(s), interest(s), or topic into a research problem. And the reason you have to define your topic as a problem to be solved, explored, examined, or potentially fixed, is because that’s the bar that is required to call your work research. Research is about in-depth inquiry and exploration toward developing a future solution or deepening historical understanding. It is not about trends, chasing fads, studying what you think is popular today, or what funding agencies appear to be interested in.
So, how do you determine whether your research interest is robust enough to become a research problem? There are two core questions you should start with:
Can you define your topic as a problem or issue?
How does your topic connect with other context(s), problem(s), people(s), or issue(s)?
At its core, research is about problem solving. In order to solve a problem, you have to define it as such. And so the starting point to defining your research as a problem is to understand its larger significance.
Two Aspects of Defining a Research Problem
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Making a Difference
Some research problems address a question(s) that can “make a difference” in the lives of people, an organization, to humanity, to infrastructure, to commerce, etc. Health researchers or psychology studies or engineering scholars rarely struggle with articulating this notion in their research question(s) because the impetus for their work is so clearly about outcomes that impact the general population, and further, their work is usually built on large existing canons of knowledge, experiments, and theories.
The key point to research that is defined as making a difference is that said “difference” has to extend beyond the subjects/objects of inquiry into the social world where the impact of such work will be far reaching and varied. However, when your research does not have a clear impact on the general population (e.g., it might be focused on a specific community and/or identity), there is no existing canon or it is very limited, often you struggle with defining your research in a way that will demonstrate societal impact.
New Knowledge
There is also research that leads towards new knowledge in a field(s) by finding new ways of thinking, suggesting news applications, or paving the way for further research, such as historical studies, or research into systems and structures. If you determine that your research aims to fill in a gap, discuss an understudied group or topic, or investigate something that has no scholarly canon (meaning, there is no varied body of literature you can reference), then your research likely falls into this category. And this category is much more difficult to define than research that is making a difference.
The new knowledge form of research tends to challenge existing norms, ask critical questions about canons and the “business as usual approach” to research, and therefore requires much more thought in terms of the framing of research questions, the scale and scope of the research, and how this research will address a problem that is important enough to impact either your respective field(s), sector(s), and/or the general public.
“Is your research “making a difference” and/or is your research going to “lead to new knowledge?” Can a research project do both?”
Comparing A to B, and Yes or No Scenarios are Not Research Problems
If the only goal of your research is to compare two sets of existing data or calculate their correlation to show a relationship between them, this is not a research problem. This kind of framing is not only too simple, it is also not going to yield results that are otherwise unknown. As Gjoko Muratovski explains:
If you’re only comparing A to B, it does not require critical thinking; there is no “why” question in that kind of problem; the absence of an identification of a “cause” frames such issues as statistical operational activities and not as research problems (2018: 28-29).
When you frame a problem in a binary, you are only skimming the surface of the issue and not providing a more in-depth, deeper investigation which a real research problem requires. Therefore, when defining a research problem, you must develop a complex understanding of your topic. Here are some questions to help define your research problem:
Have you considered multiple perspectives on your topic?
Are you researching this topic for self-enlightenment or is there a more substantive reason for your interest in it?
Are you simply gathering information in order to learn something about a certain area or are you examining a field of knowledge or dataset so that you can contribute a solution to an existing problem(s)?
Are you only trying to learn about how something works or how something was built or are you probing beyond the how of something to explaining WHY something works the way it does, or WHY something is built a particular way?
Defining a research problem starts with establishing the HOW, WHY and WHAT of a topic. How does your issue or problem appear? Why is this an issue or a problem? What potential cause(s) or impact(s) does your issue or problem have on a person(s), place(s) or institution(s)? These are the kinds of questions you want to think about in combination with each other, not singularly — meaning, HOW + WHY + WHAT = RESEARCH PROBLEM.
Knowing Your Limitations and Delimitations
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After you’ve defined your problem, the next part of the research phase is determining your scale and scope, otherwise known as your limitations and delimitations.
““You have to be knowledgeable about your topic of interest to identify research problems, but if you’re not familiar with the area you intend to study, then you will not know what the limitations of this area are, and what kind of problems need to be addressed.” ”
One of the first things you have to realize when you set out to do a research project at any level — undergrad or college capstone project, an MA thesis or PhD dissertation or organizational research — is that you cannot answer every question and you will not have time or resources to travel to every archive or historic site. So this means you will have to make decisions from the outset about what you can and cannot do, and what you will and will not do. These are called research limitations. What does this image of a university campus have to do with limitations?
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When you’re on a a university campus, there are factors that are outside of your control that you have to contend with, such as the location of the buildings, the size of your classroom, whether or not there are accessible entrances and exits, etc. You cannot change any of these factors. But what you can do is make decisions about how you’re going to navigate them, and eventually, you might even begin to think about how you can use these factors to your benefit. Part of defining a research problem is recognizing from the outset (and this will be something that you do continually throughout the research as circumstances change) what your limitations are, how you’re going to address them and, ultimately, what you will do to workaround external factors such that they do not impede your stated goals.
Delimitations are different. These are factors that are within your control. How is a trip to New York City an example of delimitation?
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If you’re only in town for a short time, this will require you to make decisions in terms of what you will and will not do. Your trip, like your research, will be shaped by these choices. Knowing what to focus on means you have to think strategically about what you can do. Delimitations, then, are meant to empower you as a researcher to make your topic researchable. Here are 5 tips from Muratovksi (2016: 30) on how to delimit your research:
Produce a statement that explains how you will investigate your research problem;
Reduce the problem to a point when the problem becomes feasible simply by setting the limits of the problem or you can choose to focus on a part of the problem instead;
Statements like “the aim of this study” make it clear what you intend to study;
A problem can be broken down into several smaller sub-problems;
All sub-problems together must add to the totality of the main problem.
Ultimately, defining a research problem involves deep interest in a topic, figuring out the type of problem you are trying to solve (i.e., making a difference or adding to an existing field of knowledge), and thinking strategically about your limitations and delimitations.
In Part 3 of this series I address research philosophy — epistemology and ontology. The two concepts that either scare or confuse students. My aim is to demystify and clarify the purpose, intention, and value of understanding your research philosophy.
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Recommended Reading:
Gjoko Muratovski Research for Designers: A Guide to Methods and Practice (2016)
