PROBLEM FORMULATION
Defining a Researchable
Problem
Research Methods
College of Public and
Community Service
University of Massachusetts
at Boston
©2011 William Holmes
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PROBLEM FORMULATION:
SOURCES OF IDEAS
- News Stories
- Personal Experiences
- Review of Research
- Electronic Databases
- Library Indexes
- Web pages
- Internet Libraries – NCJRS,
NLM…
- Authorities
- Opinion Leaders
- Funding Sources
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PROBLEM FORMULATION:
FOCUSING (DEFINING) THE PROBLEM
- Ways of Defining Problem
- Formal (nominal), defining
with words
- Example (epistemic), defining
by example
- Procedural (operational),
defining a method to recognize examples
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SOURCES OF DEFINITIONS:
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- Articles in Professional Journals
- Electronic Abstracts and Indexes
- Web Searches
- Books, Monographs, Government
Reports
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SOURCES OF DEFINITIONS:
2
- Professional Standards
- Legislation
- Regulations
- Journalistic Sources
- Advocacy Groups
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WHAT MAKES A GOOD RESEARCH
QUESTION? 1
- Focused
- Empirical
- Clear
- Based on prior research or
theory
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WHAT MAKES A GOOD RESEARCH
QUESTION? 2
- Important to answer
- Does not use “should”
- Has intuitive appeal
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PROBLEM FORMULATION:
TYPES OF RESEARCH QUESTIONS
- Exploratory
- Descriptive
- Explanatory
- Predictive
- Evaluative
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EXPLORATORY QUESTIONS
- Clarifying Questions
- Clarifying Populations
- Clarifying Ideas
- Open-ended
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DESCRIPTIVE QUESTIONS
- Obtaining specific facts
- Obtaining facts to describe
issue
- Summarizing population characteristics
- Examining non-causal relationships
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EXPLANATORY QUESTIONS:
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- Examines causal relationships
- Tests causal hypotheses
- Explains relationships
- Builds theories
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EXPLANATORY QUESTIONS:
2
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PREDICTION
- Predicts events
- Predicts characteristics
- Uses Theory and Description
- Develops predictive equations
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MIXED QUESTIONS
- Triangulation
- Multi-measures
- Multi-methods
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