Hey friends,
Last week I posted an article on research questions which are often confused with research problems.
I get this confusion quite often from PhD students
Before we can write a good research question, we need to know what problem our research is actually trying to solve
Here is a sequence that can help
Research problem → Research question → Research objectives
Each one of these has a different job.
A research problem is the problem that needs research
It could be something we don't understand well or a contradiction in existing research, or a practical problem
For example: PhD candidates live with high levels of stress but we don’t know which factors contribute the most to that stress
Here, we don't ask a question yet. The research problem just tells us what is wrong, unclear or missing.
Very important to start with a clear problem. Otherwise the research question can sound interesting but not really solving anything
Next, the research question takes the research problem and turns it into something you can research. With the previous research problem, we can for example propose the following research question: Which factors are most strongly associated with PhD candidates stress?
Now we have something we can actually study.
The next thing to do is to define the population, identify potential factors, collect data and analyse the relationships
So in short, the research problem explains why the study is needed
The research question explains what we will study
But don’t confuse the research problem with the research topic.
Like: "AI in higher education" is a topic. "Research funding allocation" is a topic.
But they’re not research problems (yet)
You still need to find something within the topic that needs explaining, testing or understanding.
For the AI use in higher education, we know that PhD candidates are using generative AI for their work. But we don’t know the impact on their ability to critically think about the scientific literature.
This would be our research problem
And we can turn this into the following research question: How does generative AI use affect PhD students' critical evaluation of research literature?
And we would have somewhere to go with that question :)
Then you could ask me: what about the research gap?
It’s closely related to the research problem, but they are not the same
The gap is what is missing from the existing knowledge.
For example, you find 30 papers that studied the use of AI among students. But very few focus on PhD students. This would be a (contextual) research gap
And you could say something like: “there is limited evidence on how PhD candidates use AI when evaluating literature”
So the gap helps justify the problem.
By the way, sometimes interesting problems are just contradictions/debates in science rather than missing literature. For example you could find 50 studies saying that AI improves productivity, but 12 studies that AI reduces critical thinking
One common mistake I have seen is making the research problem way too broad (quite common at the start of a PhD when we are usually very ambitious)
Another is writing a question that can be answered with a Google search.
Another is making the question so complicated that it contains half the thesis, like questions with multiple populations, variables, countries, time periods and methods all together into one sentence.
And finally the most common mistake: Starting with the method.
"I want to conduct a survey of 1,000 PhD students."
But why exactly? What problem will that survey help you understand?
The method comes after the question, not before
A simple exercise
When you're working on your next research project, try hese four sentences:
1. My topic is about...
What broad field/are am I studying?
2 The problem is...
What don't we understand, what isn't working, or what is contradictory in the literature?
3 My question is...
What specifically do I want to find?
4 My objectives are...
What do I need to do to answer that question?
These 4 sentences should all feel connected.
If your question doesn't clearly respond to the problem, go back
If your objectives don't help answer the question, change them
And if you can't explain the problem without talking about your method, you probably need to go back another step.
Let me know what you think and let’s continue the conversation in our community
See you next week,
Jamal
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