Article S9.3 Formulating Research-Worthy Problems Seminar Leader: Satya Sundar Sethy Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India satyasundar[at]iitm.ac.in Philosophy and research are historically related to each other. In the fifth and fourth centuries BC, Socrates and Plato contributed to bring things into intellectual order. They were trying to provide or, at least, seek some coherent system that can explain why things are the way they are. This kind of effort is associated with research or systematic probing into things. The seminar addressed the following questions: How to confirm whether a problem is research-worthy? How to formulate research-worthy problems? A problem can be considered research-worthy if an acceptable solution cannot be found in the relevant literature (Creswell, 2005). A research-worthy problem is expected to have the following features: (a) It relates to a known gap in some relevant body of knowledge. (b) It seeks to evaluate existing knowledge by examining it in a different context (e.g., different category of participants, different environment, or different performance measures). (c) It attempts to expand upon previous research by investigating into some of the boundary conditions or limitations of the existing body of knowledge. The following steps can be used as a guide to find research-worthy problems: Look Within a Domain: A researcher looks around within a domain to find problems that appear interesting. Read Literature: The researcher then refers to the scholarly literature pertaining to the domain area and ascertains if any of those problems have been explored earlier. Synthesise Literature: Then the researcher synthesises the literature and situates the problems within the relevant body of knowledge. Consult Experts: Finally, the researcher consults and gets feedback from subject experts (Ellis & Levy, 2008). It is equally important for a researcher to know how to avoid problems which may not be considered research-worthy. The following general guidelines may help: (a) Avoid problems based exclusively on personal observations or experience. A research-worthy problem must be related to the existing body of scholarly literature. (b) Avoid problems defined in purely empirical terms, for example a mere comparison of two sets of data. (c) Avoid problems which are framed too narrowly to seek a simplistic “yes” or “no” answer. References Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Ellis, T. J., & Levy, Y. (2008). Framework of problem-based research: A guide for novice researchers on the development of a research-worthy problem. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 11, 17-33. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://inform.nu/Articles/Vol11/ISJv11p017-033Ellis486.pdf Reported by Satyendra Chandra Pandey, with inputs from Satya Sundar Sethy; edited by D. P. Dash. [April 10, 2011] Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home |
