Week 2 – Research Problem

1. Introduction
The first steps toward conducting your research will be to clearly define and state your research
problem and to translate the research problem into focused and meaningful research
question(s). Depending on the nature of your research, the nature of your research question(s)
may vary and the research question(s) will help you establish the theoretical basis of your
research and select the design of your research.

This week’s notes will guide you through the basic steps and considerations involved in defining
and stating your research problem and in translating the research problem into meaningful,
relevant and focused research questions.

1.1 Topic Learning Outcomes

During this topic you should be able to achieve the following learning outcomes:

LO1. Understand the relationship and importance of the ideas, questions and topics to generate
research problems and the structure of the research statement

LO2. Identify strategies and method to evaluate different types of research questions

LO3. Understand the different justifications of a research project

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 2. Research Problem

These two quotes from Charles Kettering and Albert Einstein demonstrate the importance of
clearly framing and stating a research problem. If you are unclear about what you want to
research, it will be very difficult to complete your research project successfully. Some questions
that you may use in the process of clearly framing your research problem are the following:

● why is this problem important?

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 ● what will be achieved by trying to solve this problem?
● is this an interesting problem?/how can this be formulated into an interesting problem?
● how can I state the problem or the context of the research in a way that most people will
be able to relate to?
● is this a pressing problem? in other words, what are the repercussions if this problem is
not addressed?
● what are the benefits if this problem is solved and who will benefit from solving this
problem?

These questions will help you clearly identify the context of the problem, the stakeholders
involved, and the significance of the problem. The contribution of your research project may be
a contribution to the company or organisation, the industry or field, to business and
management knowledge or to society.
Your problem statement should clearly state the topic or theme of your research, it should
clearly place the research problem in context (e.g. identify the field or specialization area) and it
should identify the sector and company, if a specific sector and company are involved. Also, the
problem statement could include a brief description of or given an idea about the research
methodology. The problem statement should be translated into the research question(s), and
the aim(s) and objective(s) of the research (Adams, Khan & Raeside, 2014; O’Gorman &
MacIntosh, 2015; Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2015).

3. Research Questions

Once the research problem has been framed, it needs to be transformed into one or more
scientifically researchable research questions. The research question(s) will capture what your

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research project will seek to answer, and it/they will be at the centre of your research project.
Your research question(s) will impact the literature review because it/they will inform the
selection of sources that will be relevant to the area of the research, the design of your research
as different types of questions will call for different methods of research, and the outcome of
the research project as it/they will help you develop clear and focused conclusions and it/they
will help you develop your understanding around the research problem. It is typical to formulate
a ‘central’ research question which will capture the overarching general focus of your topic and
to also formulate a small number of more specific and detailed research questions which will
capture individual and specific elements of the topic and which will be aligned with the research
objectives.
The research question(s) will typically ask ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ and they can be classified as
● exploratory
● descriptive
● explanatory
● evaluative
depending on whether the questions seek to explore, describe, explain or evaluate an issue,
problem, situation, etc. The type of question will determine how the question is phrased and
vice versa. For example, descriptive questions may begin by asking ‘how’ or ‘what’. For example,
“what factors influence a certain variable, phenomenon, or situation” or “how is a certain
variable or situation impacted by factors x, y and z”. These two questions would require a
description of the factors or a description of the way that certain factors impact a variable or
situation but they do not require to go beyond description. Exploratory questions may contain
an element of description and they will also typically begin by asking ‘how’ or ‘what’ but they
will also require some exploration into the matter under study, for example to discover that
other factors are in place as well. Explanatory questions will typically ask ‘why’ and they will
seek to go beyond just describing or exploring an issue or situation to seeking explanation(s) for
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this issue or situation. Finally, evaluative questions will typically ask ‘how’ or ‘what’ but they will
seek to capture the extent of something. For example, ‘to what extent did a certain factor
impact a variable/issue/situation’ or ‘how effective/ineffective/impactful was something’.

Also, the research question(s) may be classified as general or specific, depending on how
general or specific their scope is. Also, research questions can be classified as quantitative or
qualitative, depending on the methodological approach required to answer these questions
(Adams, Khan & Raeside, 2014; O’Gorman & MacIntosh, 2015; Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill,
2015). We will come back to this matter letter, when we will look at methodology.
As a recommendation, you should aim to come up with research questions that are not too
broad, because a broad research question may require more time and resources and more
research qualifications and experience than is typically required for the completion of a Masters
level dissertation or research project. At the same time, you do not want your research question
to be too narrow, as it may be trivial to answer and it may not have enough substance. Also, you
should aim to come up with a research question that is current and relevant today, but you
want to avoid research questions that may be sensitive and that may raise ethical concerns or
that may upset involved parties or topics where access to data may be a sensitive matter. At the
same time, you should avoid coming up with research questions which have been over-research
and where it will be difficult to offer an original perspective for your research project. Good
research questions should be: focused; researchable; feasible; specific; complex; and relevant
(Monash University, 2021).

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Table 2.1 Examples of research questions:

Research idea Research question

Media campagne following product How effective is a media campaign designed to

Graduate recruitment via the internet To what extent and in what type of context is
internet-based recruitment and selection of
graduates effective and why?

Supermarket coupons as a promotional In what ways does issuing coupons at supermarket

Challenger banks and small business How has the emergence of challenger banks
impacted upon small business financing and why?

Table 2.1 above offers some examples of research ideas and related research questions. As you
can see, these research questions are quite focused and they identify specific problems to study
in each case. Some of the questions above could be narrowed down even further to make the
scope of the inquiry more manageable. For example, the second question about graduate
recruitment via the internet could be narrowed down to ask:

To what extent and under what circumstances is internet-based recruitment and

Or the question about challenges banks and small business could be narrowed down to ask:

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 How has the emergence of challenger banks impacted upon small constructing business
financing in country X and why?

4. Research Justification

There should be a rationale behind the research topic that you selected and you should be able
to justify the choice of topic. The justification of your topic may be established in different ways.
For example, the topic will be a personal choice - this is a topic of interest to you. Here you may
provide arguments and evidence from personal experience to justify why this topic is a personal
choice. Also, your topic should be grounded in existing knowledge and research. You should use
academic sources and publications to justify that there is a research interest in your topic. In
addition, you may use industry reports, policy reports, information from reputable press, and
other reputable sources to establish that your research problem is interesting and relevant. In
addition, you should be able to provide detailed and relevant context on the research problem
in order to demonstrate that the research problem is meaningful and relevant to the specific
context that you are placing it.
Your research should be justified by the benefits that it is going to produce. For example, it may
make a theoretical contribution in the form of verifying or contesting theoretical models or in
the form of advancing a theory. Alternatively, you may apply a new methodology to an already
researched problem. If the problem has been researched using certain methodological
approaches and you are going to use a different approach, then your research is going to
contribute new knowledge. Similarly, your research may address a certain practice-based
problem in a new context. For example, you may want to apply an existing framework or

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research to a new organisation faced with the same problem (Adams, Khan & Raeside, 2014;
O’Gorman & MacIntosh, 2015; Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2015).

References:

Adams, J., Khan, H.T.A. & Raeside, R. (2014) Research Methods for Business and Social Science
Students. 2nd Ed. Sage. India: New Delhi.

Cambridge Dictionary (2021) Research. Available at:

Monash University (2021) Developing research questions. Available at:

O’Gorman, K. & MacIntosh, (2015) Research Methods for Business & Management: A guide to
writing your dissertation. 2nd Ed. Goodfellow Publishers Limited. UK: Oxford.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. & Thornhill, A. (2015) Research Methods for Business Students. 17th Ed.
Pearson Education, England: Essex.