Slide 4: 1.

The research problem

Research problems can be formed from any question or assertion to be answered or
investigated.
 However, not all questions can be transformed into research problems, and some may
be difficult to study.
 It is crucial for the problem to withstand scrutiny and require considerable time to
think through. Identifying and specifying a research problem is often not easy.
 Formulating a research problem requires knowledge of the subject area and
research methodology.
Slide 5678: 2. The importance of formulating a research problem
The formulation of a research problem is the first and most crucial step in the research process,
serving as the foundation of a study.
It is like identifying a destination before embarking on a journey, and a well-formulated problem
ensures a successful study.
A research problem can take various forms, from simple to complex, and the way it is formulated
determines the type of study design, sampling strategy, research instrument, and analysis.
The important:
The formulation of a problem is like the ‘input’ to a study, and the ‘output’, such as the quality
of the research report and the validity of associations or causation, is entirely dependent on it.
Taking time to formulate a research problem is crucial for a clearer understanding and a
successful research journey.
Remember:
 You may become more confused but this is normal and a sign of progression. confusion
is often but a first step towards clarity. Take time over formulating your problem, for the
clearer you are about your research problem/question, the easier it will be for you later
on. Remember, this is the most crucial step.

Slide 9: [Link] of research problems

Most research in the humanities revolves around four Ps: People – Problems – Phonomena -
Programmes

Most research studies are based on at-least combination of two p’s and it varies from study to
study.

You may select a group of individual ( a group or a community as such - “people”), either the
existence of certain issues or problems relating to their lives, to ascertain attitude of a group of
people towards an issue “Problem”; to establish existence of a regularity “phenomenon” or to
evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention “program”.
Slide 10: Example

Your focus may be the study of an issue, an association or a phenomenon;

For example, the relationship between unemployment and street crime, smoking and cancer, or
fertility and mortality  Which is done on the basis of information collected from individuals,
groups, communities or organisations.

The emphasis in these studies is on exploring, discovering or establishing associations or

causation. Similarly, you can study different aspects of a programme: its effectiveness, its
structure, the need for it, consumers’ satisfaction with it, and so on. In order to ascertain these
you collect information from people.

Slide 11: TABLE 4.1 Aspects of a research problem

Every research study has two aspects: the study population & the subject area.
 The study population: individuals, groups and communities – is the people from whom
the information is collected.
 The subject area: is a problem, programme or phenomenon about which the information
is collected.
Slide 12 - 13: Example:
You can study a problem, a programme or a phenomenon in any academic field or from any
professional perspective.
Health
Issues relating to the spread of a disease, drug rehabilitation, an immunisation programme, the
effectiveness of a treatment, the extent of consumers’ satisfaction or issues concerning a
particular health programme can all provide you with a range of research problems.
Education
Similarly, in education there are several issues: students’ satisfaction with a teacher, attributes of
a good teacher, the impact of the home environment on the educational achievement of students,
and the supervisory needs of postgraduate students in higher education.
Any other academic or occupational field can similarly be divided into subfields and examined
for a potential research problem.

Most fields lend themselves to the above categorisation even though specific problems and
programmes vary markedly from field to field.
The concept of 4Ps is applicable to both quantitative and qualitative research though the
main difference at this stage is the extent of their specificity, dissection, precision and focus.
There is a separate section on ‘Formulating a research problem in qualitative research’ later in
the chapter, which provides further guidance on the process.

Slide 14: Considerations in selecting a research problem

When selecting a research problem/topic there are a number of considerations to keep in mind
which will help to ensure that your study will be manageable and that you remain motivated.
These considerations are:

1. Interest: Selecting a research problem based on interest is crucial as it requires time, effort,
and potential issues, making it difficult to sustain motivation and energy.
2. Magnitude: understand the research process, narrow the topic down to a manageable,
specific, and clear topic, considering its magnitude, and utilizing available resources.
3. Ethical issues: Ethical issues and problems are important considerations in research, as they
can affect the study population, share sensitive information, or be experimental. Thorough
examination of these issues is crucial during problem-formulation.
4. Relevance: Your topic must be relevant to the previous one and it must add on to the existing
stock of knowledge and should act as a bridge so to remove the gap.
5. Level of expertise: Ensure you have sufficient expertise for the task. Allow for the fact that
you will learn during the study and may receive help from your research supervisor and others,
but remember that you need to do most of the work yourself.
6. Measurement: In quantitative studies, it's crucial to be clear about the indicators and
measurement of concepts. For instance, if you're measuring the effectiveness of a health
promotion program, it's essential to know what determines its effectiveness and how it will be
measured. While developing a measurement procedure is essential, it's crucial to have a clear
understanding of these concepts at this stage.
7. Availability of data: If your topic entails collection of information from secondary sources
(office records, client records, census or other already-published reports, etc.) make sure that this
data is available and in the format you want before finalising your topic.

Slide 15: Steps in formulating a research problem

The formulation of a research problem is the most crucial part of the research journey as the
quality and relevance of your research project entirely depends upon it. As mentioned earlier,
every step that constitutes the how part of the research journey depends upon the way you
formulated your research problem. The process of formulating a research problem consists of 7
steps:
Step 1: Identify a broad field or subject area of interest to you. Ask yourself, ‘What is it that
really interests me as a professional?’ In the author’s opinion, it is a good idea to think about the
field in which you would like to work after graduation. This will help you to find an interesting
topic, and one which may be of use to you in the future.
For example:
 if you are a social work student, inclined to work in the area of youth welfare, refugees or
domestic violence after graduation, you might take to research in one of these areas.
 if you are studying marketing you might be interested in researching consumer
behaviour.
 as a student of public health, intending to work with patients who have HIV/AIDS, you
might like to conduct research on a subject area relating to HIV/AIDS.
 As far as the research journey goes, these are the broad research areas. It is imperative that
you identify one of interest to you before undertaking your research journey.
Step 2: Dissect the broad area into subareas
At the onset, you will realise that all the broad areas mentioned above – youth welfare, refugees,
domestic violence, consumer behaviour and HIV/AIDS – have many aspects.

For example, there are many aspects and issues in the area of domestic violence, illustrated in
Figure 4.1.
Similarly, you can select any subject area from other fields such as community health or
consumer research and go through this dissection process.
 In preparing this list of subareas you should also consult others who have some knowledge of
the area and the literature in your subject area.
 Once you have developed an exhaustive list of the subareas from various sources, you
proceed to the next stage where you select what will become the basis of your inquiry.

Step 3: Select what is of most interest to you

Based on the subareas that you figure out, prioritize your passion, and remove non-interesting
subareas.
Make sure that you can manage issues based on time, expertise, and resources on your topic.
Once you've chosen an issue you can manage, proceed to the next step. Remember, not all
subareas are suitable for study.

Step 4: Raise research questions

Based on the subareas that you already narrowed
Create a list of questions related to your chosen subarea and, if too many are overwhelming,
undergo the remove process.
Step 5: Formulate objectives
Formulating main objectives and sub-objectives from research questions is crucial.
Objectives transform questions into behavioral aims using action-oriented words. Some
researchers start from objectives and formulate research questions, while others focus on
research questions.
Step 6: Assess your objectives

Examine your objectives to ascertain the feasibility of achieving them through your research
endeavor.
Consider: time, resources (financial and human) and technical expertise
Step 7: Double-check
Go back and give final consideration to whether or not you are sufficiently interested in the
study, and have adequate resources to undertake it.
Ask yourself, ‘Am I really enthusiastic about this study?’ and ‘Do I really have enough
resources to undertake it?’
Answer these questions thoughtfully and realistically. If your answer to one of them is ‘no’,
reassess your objectives.

Slide 24: 6. The formulation of research objectives

Objectives are the goals you set out to attain in your study.

Objectives should be listed under two headings:

- Main objectives: overall statement of the thrust of study

- Sub-objectives: specific aspects of the topic that you want to investigate within the main
framework of your study.
The objectives should start with words such as ‘to determine ‘, ‘to find out’, ‘to ascertain’, ‘to
measure’, ‘to explore’.

Slide 25-26-27: Example 1: Suppose you want to conduct a study in the area of alcoholism. In
formulating your research problem take the following steps.

If your study is primarily descriptive, your main objective should clearly describe the major
focus of your study, even mentioning the organisation and its location unless these are to be kept
confidential (e.g. to describe the types of treatment programme provided by [name of the
organisation] to alcoholics in [name of the place] or to find out the opinion of the community
about the health services provided by [name of the health centre/department] in [name of the
place]).

Slide 28: FIGURE 4.5 Characteristics of objectives

Irrespective of the type of research, the objectives should be expressed in such a way that the
wording clearly, completely and specifically communicates to your readers your intention.

If your study is primarily descriptive, your main objective should clearly describe the major
focus of your study, even mentioning the organisation and its location unless these are to be kept
confidential.

(e.g. to describe the types of treatment programme provided by [name of the organisation] to
alcoholics in [name of the place] or to find out the opinion of the community about the health
services provided by [name of the health centre/department] in [name of the place]).

Identification of the organisation and its location is important as the services may be peculiar to
the place and the organisation and may not represent the services provided by others to similar
populations.

If your study is correlational in nature, in addition to the first three characteristics shown in
Figure 4.5, the wording of the main objective should also include the main variables being
correlated.

(e.g. to ascertain the impact of migration on family roles or to compare the effectiveness of
different teaching methods on the comprehension of students).

If the overall thrust of your study is to test a hypothesis, the wording of the main objectives
should also indicate the direction of the relationship being tested (e.g. to ascertain if an increase
in youth unemployment will increase the incidence of street crime, or to demonstrate that the
provision of maternal and child health services to Aboriginal people in rural Australia will
reduce infant mortality).

Slide 29: 7. Study population:

A study in social sciences includes a study population, which gathers necessary information to
answer research questions. To select appropriate respondents, it is crucial to clearly define the
study population.

Suppose you have designed a study to ascertain the needs of young people living in a
community.

 In terms of the study population, one of the first questions you need to answer is:

‘Who do I consider to be a young person?’ You need to decide, which age group your
respondents should come from.

Is it those between 15 and 18, 15 and 20 or 15 and 25 years of age? Or you may be
interested in some other age group.

You need to decide this before undertaking your research journey. Having decided the
age group that constitutes your ‘young person’.

 The next question you need to consider is whether you want to select young people of
either gender or confine the study to one only.
 In addition, there is another dimension to consider: that is, what constitutes the
community? Which geographical area(s) or ethnic background should I select my
respondents from?

Slide 30: 7. Study population:

Let us take another example.

Suppose you want to find out the settlement process of immigrants. As a part of identifying your
study population, you need to decide who would you consider an immigrant.

Is it a person who immigrated 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago? You also need to consider the countries
from where the immigrants come. Will you select your respondents irrespective of the country of
origin or select only those who have come from a specific country(ies)? In a way you need to
narrow your definition of the study population as you have done with your research problem.

Slide 31: 7. Study population:

In quantitative research, you need to narrow both the research problem and the study
population and make them as specific as possible so that you and your readers are clear about
them.
Qualitative research allows for flexibility and varied data collection, reflecting the exploratory
approach's philosophical base.

Slide 32: Establishing operational definitions

In research studies, it's crucial to define difficult-to-measure words or items and establish rules to
clarify their meaning.

Working definitions or operational definitions are used to identify the study population and
define concepts in a measurable form.

These definitions are for the study's purpose and may differ from legal or other definitions.
Understanding concepts can vary, so working definitions help clarify the meaning of the
concepts used.

Table 4.2 lists the concepts and the population groups to be operationalised for the above
examples.

The following example studies help to explain this. The main objectives are:

Although these objectives clearly state the main thrust of the studies, they are not specific in
terms of the main variables to be studied and the study populations.

 You cannot count the number of children living below the poverty line until you decide
what constitutes the poverty line and how to determine it;
 You cannot find out the impact of immigration on family roles unless you identify which
roles constitute family roles;
 You cannot measure effectiveness until you define what effectiveness is.

On the other hand, it is equally important to decide exactly what you mean by ‘children’,
‘immigrants’ or ‘young’.

 Up to what age will you consider a person to be a child (i.e. 5, 10, 15 or 18)? Who would
you consider young? A person 15 years of age, 20, 25 or 30?
 Who would you consider to be an immigrant? A person who immigrated 40, 20 or 5 years
ago?

In addition, are you going to consider immigrants from every country or only a few?

 In many cases you need to develop operational definitions for the variables and concepts
you are studying and for the population that becomes the source of the information for
your study.

 Though in daily life you often use words such as ‘children’, ‘youth’ and ‘immigrant’
loosely, you need to be more specific when using them in a research study.
 In a research study you need to define these clearly in order to avoid ambiguity and
confusion. This is achieved through the process of developing operational/working
definitions. You need to develop operational definitions for the major concepts you are
using in your study and develop a framework for the study population enabling you to
select appropriate respondents.

Slide 35: Formulating a research problem in qualitative research