Research Question | Research Problem Formulation

Research Question | Research Problem Formulation

Here you will know all about the information needed for effective coursework and initial documentation. The necessary steps in building a research block are very important as it guides the entire way. Must Read Article How to write a Research Paper? | Research Paper Format

Research Problem Definition

Research Question is the first step in any effective research. It is the Path for the entire journey which you are going to take. The question should be valid enough to sustain you till the time you succeed or the research gets completed.
Read the 5 Golden Rules of Research Methodology for Effective Research Techniques.
Let's look at the definition, 

What is Research Problem Definition?

They are basically Pain Points in the minds of the fellow researchers or the community as a whole. Be it any field, the ultimate aim of any research is to serve the community. So, how can you do that? simply by solving a problem. Finding a sustainable and suitable problem is much more difficult than solving the problem. Problems vary from domains and fields but they all target either a specific group of people, culture, technology or the community. The correct problem will guide you through the entire process of your work. It should motivate you to move forward in tough times and you should never feel at any point that you have taken the wrong problem to solve. 

How to find a Research Problem?

Pain Points are not easy to find. You need to gather enough information to come to a conclusion. Most of the problems are solved in one form or the other. Most of the solutions may also look similar, then what's the point?

Here are some Long Term methods to find an idea.

Root Cause Division

You need to understand the Root Cause of the problem which you are going to solve. Once you go that deep, you will find things coming up which you can't understand and try to keep a note of such situations. Search the Internet or ask your peers if they know about the situation. If no solutions have been found yet, try to formulate the statement or idea into a problem. Think if the idea is relevant or not. Discuss the idea with your peers and seniors and if it is interesting, this is the problem you were looking for.

Root Cause of Problem

Here basically you are dividing the bigger problem into smaller pieces and instead of thinking of the idea as a whole, try to solve it bit by bit. When you do this, you will find more problems coming up, don't ignore these, you will need all of them in the future. You will surely get many ideas to solve. You can integrate them into a single entity or individually solve them.

Research Gap Model

Research Gaps are basically the Leftover points within a particular topic or idea that hasn't been explored still. The more valuable the idea, the number of research gaps will increase and more people will be involved in the search.
Research gaps are sometimes difficult to find as a person new into a domain may not know about all the areas in the field. A person should have a fair idea of the domain in which he is working, to fill or find a particular gap. These findings together complete our study in a particular domain and help us to move forward with it. If a domain or topic has many Research gaps then the topic is likely to be new and less explored. It may also deduce from a branch of the particular domain which is left unexplored.

Research Gap Model

You can find research gaps by reading many papers in your field of study. After reading say about 25-30 papers you can understand the overview of the niche and how to go about it. Reading papers is very important in this model as it will help you to know what you need to work on. You may also find several bits and chunks of research done in a particular domain and you can also accumulate them together and thus, can gain an idea about where to start.

Both the Root Cause Method and Research Gap Model take much time to innovate and effective idea. If you want to do a PhD. in Research, then this should be the one and only approach in Problem Finding, otherwise you can use the Short Term approached listed.

Conclusions | Future Scope

Conclusions are the best short-term way to find an idea. An Ideal Conclusion should make way for future researchers to begin and thus should be the first path to study for new beginners. While reading for conclusions, look for hints given by the authors about the future work. Some authors make it easy by providing an additional section called Future Scope and Work. In this section, you can easily get to the points about where to start in that field and when lies the scope of the research. You will also find authors comments about the research or the idea, they might express their views about the topic which might be an essential point in your research.  Such comments show the path for effective work as you can gain huge insights about the field.

Literature Survey | Background Study

Literature Survey or Background Study is basically the study of the previous work done in the field. If you carefully study those you will understand the work done previously and what approaches were taken to solve the related problems. You can understand the concept of the approached made in solving the problem and try to integrate such methods in your own problem when you find it.

When you read many such Background studies you will understand the way people are looking into the problem and if required you can take an alternate path which is different from others in your domain. You can keep a note of what others are doing in their work and try to do something different. But there is a catch, you need to read majorly the survey papers or review papers, with which you can get more exposure to a variety of problems. Full-length original papers won't give you such great exposure as compared to survey papers, as full-length papers will have research specific to the author which is of less use for us. The Literature review will help us to sort and accumulate our References which will be our next model.

References | Citations

When you read the References for a paper, you get a fair idea about the papers from where the idea or concept was developed or initiated. You can have a look at such papers and hope that a new idea might click in your head. Also, citations widen your base of resource which ultimately helps you to find the right idea. You must only collect the references relevant to your work or idea using an estimated knowledge and start deducing those and you will see you can gather more useful references related to your field.
It is therefore very important to cite your paper properly in order to help future researchers in your field and help them grow.
Must Read Article   How to Cite?
It is like a tree which will grow on and on until you hit the idea. References can also act as a base for the other two Short-term methods. As you keep collecting resources, you will find multiple niches to work on and you can save them for future work.

Conclusion

Finding an effective problem is indeed a difficult task as it might turn out that the problem which you studied for years is unsolvable. Example of such a case is Computer Science Cryptography, where there are many unsolvable problems which researchers know but are still unable to solve. This task is not easy and requires enough motivation to keep going. You should always remember to follow the ethics of research and never intend to Plagiarize.
If you don't know what is Plagiarism, Must Read Article    What is Plagiarism?
If you have unknowingly fallen into this unethical misconduct, you must Read this Article to Know the Types of Plagiarism. Whichever problem you choose should be of enough value to the community and you should be able to sustain with it for at least 4 to 5 years.  If you follow the methods above, you will get a fantastic idea in your domain and I am sure you will benefit the society in the long run.