A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018
Understanding research problems
Defining a project: topic, question, problem, working hypothesis
Research and writing
In chapter 1 we gave you a formula that expresses how experienced researchers think about their work:
1. 1. Topic: I am working on X (stories about the Battle of the Alamo)
1. 2. Question: because I want to find out Y (why its story became a national legend)
1. 3. Significance: so that I can help others understand Z (how such regional myths have shaped the American character).
When you can state that significance from the point of view of your readers, you have more than a question: you have posed a research problem that they recognize needs a solution.
Among researchers, the term problem has a special meaning that sometimes confuses beginners. In our everyday world, a problem is something we try to avoid. But in academic research, a problem is something we seek out, even invent. Indeed, without a problem to work on, a researcher is out of work.
Experienced researchers often talk about their problems in shorthand. When asked what they are working on, they often answer with what sounds like a general topic: adult measles, mating calls of Wyoming elk. As a result, beginners may think that having a topic to read about is the same thing as having a problem to solve. But without a specific question to answer and a reason to find that answer significant, researchers have no way of knowing when they have enough. So they can be tempted to throw in everything just to be safe.
To avoid the judgment that your paper is just a data dump, you need a problem, one that focuses on finding just those data that will help you solve it. To find one, you need to know how problems work.
2.2.1 Understanding Practical and Conceptual Problems
There are two kinds of research problems: practical and conceptual. Each of them has a two-part structure:
✵ ▪ a situation or condition, and
✵ ▪ undesirable costs or consequences caused by that condition.
Your research question is about your problem’s condition; its significance follows from your problem’s cost or consequence.
What differentiates practical and conceptual problems is the nature of those conditions and costs/consequences. The condition of a practical problem can be any state of affairs in the world that troubles you or, better, your readers: a traffic jam, foreign competition, a disease we can’t effectively treat. The cost of a practical problem is always some tangible effect we don’t like: inconvenience, expense, pain, even death. Practical problems are often a matter of perspective: if my company’s products are outselling yours, that’s a problem for you but not for me.
The condition of a conceptual problem is always some version of not knowing or understanding something. A conceptual problem does not have a tangible cost but a consequence. This consequence is a particular kind of ignorance: a lack of understanding that keeps us from understanding something else that is even more significant. Put another way, because we haven’t answered one question, we can’t answer another that is more important.
In short, practical problems concern what we should do; conceptual problems concern what we should think. Practical problems are most common in the professional world; conceptual problems are most common in academe.
2.2.2 Distinguishing Pure and Applied Research
We call research pure when it addresses a conceptual problem that does not have any direct practical consequences, when it only improves the understanding of a community of researchers. We call research applied when it addresses a conceptual problem that does have practical consequences. You can tell whether research is pure or applied by considering the significance of your project: is it about understanding or doing?
1. 1. Topic: I am studying how readings from the Hubble telescope differ from readings for the same stars measured by earthbound telescopes
1. 2. Question: because I want to find out how much the atmosphere distorts measurements of electromagnetic radiation
1. 3. Practical Significance: so that astronomers can use data from earthbound telescopes to measure more accurately the density of electromagnetic radiation.
Applied research is common in academic fields such as business, engineering, and medicine and in companies and government agencies that do research to understand what must be known before they can solve a problem.
Some new researchers may be uneasy with pure research because the consequence of a conceptual problem—not knowing something—seems so abstract. Since they are not yet part of a community that cares deeply about understanding its part of the world, they feel that their findings aren’t good for much. So they try to show the importance of their conceptual answer by cobbling onto it an implausible practical use:
1. 1. Topic: I am studying differences among nineteenth-century versions of the Alamo story
1. 2. Question: because I want to find out how politicians used stories of such events to shape public opinion
1. 3. Potential Practical Significance: in order to protect ourselves from unscrupulous politicians.
Most readers will find the link between this research question and its asserted significance a stretch. But for researchers in American history, the question does not need to have practical significance. As the term pure suggests, many researchers value the pursuit of knowledge “for its own sake” as a reflection of humanity’s highest calling to know more.
So if you are doing academic research, resist the urge to turn a conceptual problem into a practical one—unless you’ve specifically been asked to do so. You are unlikely to solve any genuine practical problem in a course project. And in any case, most academic researchers see their mission not as fixing the problems of the world but as understanding them better (which may or may not lead to fixing them).