Final Part
THE SELECTION AND FORMULATION OF RESEARCH PROBLEM
RESEARCH PROBLEM
A research problem is a statement about an area of concern, a condition to be improved, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or in practice that points to the need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation.
In some social science disciplines, the research problem is typically posed in the form of a question. A research problem does not state how to do something, offer a vague or broad proposition, or present a value question.
The purpose of a problem statement is to:
[1] Introduce the reader to the importance of the topic being studied. The reader is oriented to the significance of the study and the research questions or hypotheses to follow;
[2] Places the problem into a particular context that defines the parameters of what is to be investigated.
[3] Provides the framework for reporting the results and indicates what is probably necessary to conduct the study and explains how the findings will present this information.
Basic characteristics of the research problem:
For your research problem to be effective, make sure that it has these basic characteristics:
Reflecting on important issues or needs;
Based on factual evidence (it’s non-hypothetical);
Being manageable and relevant;
Suggesting a testable and meaningful hypothesis (avoiding useless answers)
Formulation of Research Problem
Formulating your research problem enables you to make the purpose of your study clear to yourself and target readers. Focus your paper on providing relevant data to address it. A problem statement is an effective and essential tool to keep you on track with research and evaluate it.
There are Five ways to formulate the research problem:
[1] Specify research objectives
A clear statement that defines all objectives can help you conduct and develop effective and meaningful research. They should be manageable to bring you success. A few goals will help you keep your study relevant. This statement also helps professors evaluate the questions your research project answers and the different methods that you use to address them.
[2] Review the context of your research problem
It’s necessary to work hard to define and test all kinds of environmental variables to make your project successful. Why do you need to do that?
This step can help you define if the important findings of your study will deliver enough data to be worth considering. Identify specific environmental variables that may potentially affect your research and start formulating effective methods to control all of them.
[3] Explore the nature of the research problem.
Research problems may range from simple to complex, and everything depends on a range of variables and their relationships. Some of them can be directly relevant to specific research questions, while others are completely unimportant for your project.
Why should you understand their nature? This knowledge enables you to develop effective solutions. To get a deep understanding of all dimensions, think about focus groups and other relevant details to provide the necessary insight into a particular question.
[4] Determine variable relationships.
Scientific, social, and other studies often focus on creating a certain sequence of repeating behaviors over time. What does your project entail? Completing the entire process involves:
Identifying the variables that affect possible solutions to your research problem;
Deciding on the degree to which you can use and control all of them for study purposes;
Determining functional relationships between existing variables;
Choose the most critical variables for a solution to your research problem.
During the formulation stage, it’s necessary to consider and generate as many potential approaches and variable relationships as you can.
[5] Alternative approaches
Anticipate the possible consequences of alternative approaches. There are different consequences that each course of action or approach can bring, and that’s why you need to anticipate them.
Why communicate possible outcomes? It’s a primary goal of any research process.
Basic Steps in Formulating a Research Problem
What is the most essential part of your research project? It is obviously the formulating of a research problem or selecting your research topic. This is because the quality & relevancy of your research work completely depends on it. The process of formulating a research problem requires a series of steps.
Look at 7 basic steps in formulating a research problem.
[1] Identify the Broad Study Area
This is a great idea to think about the subject area of your interest. You should identify the field in which you would like to work a long time after your academic study or graduation. It will help you tremendously to get an interesting research topic. For example- if you do graduation in sociology, you must decide your research study area in sociology. You might choose social problems like crime, road accidents, community health, juvenile delinquency, victimology.
For example- if you do post-graduation in Safety and Security with a specialization in Cyber Security, you must decide on your research study area in Cyber security. You might choose problems related to cyber threats, cybercrimes, cyber trends, etc.
[2] Dissect the Broad Study Area into Subareas
In this stage, you need to dissect and specify your research broad study area into some subareas. You would consult with your supervisor in this regard. Write down subareas. For example- if you select crime as your broad study area, then dissect it into a crime against person; crime against property; index crime; unemployment & social stability, unemployment & crime, unemployment & individual frustration, etc.
In this case, your research title may be how crimes are being perpetrated or how unemployment or society produces criminal activities. Or how it creates frustration in mind among unemployed people.
For example- if you select Cyber security as your broad study area, then dissect it into network security, web security, database security related to cybercrime, etc.
[3] Mark-up your Interest
It is almost impossible to study all subareas. That’s why you must identify your area of interest. You should select issues about which you are passionate. Your interest must be the most important determinant of your research study.
Once you select your research study of interest, you should delete other subareas in which you do not feel interested. Keep in mind that if you lose interest in your research study it won’t bring any results eventually.
[4] Study Research Questions
In this step in formulating a research problem, you would point out your research questions under the area of interest as you decided in the previous stage.
if you select crime, your questions might be “how is the frequency of crime of murder committed (in a certain place within a certain period); if unemployment is your study area, your questions might be “how unemployment impacts individual social status?” “How it affects social stability?” “How does it create frustration on individuals?”
Define what research problem or question you are going to study? The more you study the research problem it will be just as relevant and fruitful to solve the problem indeed.
[5] Set Out Objectives
Set out conspicuously your research root objectives and sub-objectives. Research objectives essentially come from research questions.
if you do a study on “The frequency of the crime of murder committed (according to place and period) then why you would like to study it and why focus on frequency? If you do study “Impact of unemployment on individual social status” as your research problem or research question. Then, set out what would you like to explore to address.
For Example- your main objective might be to examine the unemployment status in a particular society or state. And sub-objectives would be its effects on individuals’ social life. Setting out specific main and sub-objectives are so crucial.
[6] Assess your Objectives
Now, you should evaluate your objectives to make sure of the possibility of attaining them through your research study. Assess your objectives in terms of time, budget, resources, and technical expertise at your hand.
You should also assess your research questions in light of reality. Determine what outcome will bring your study. If you can assess accurately the purpose of the research study it will bring significant results in the long run. In fact, research objectives determine the value of the study you are going to work out.
[7] Check Back
Before you go on research work you should review all steps in formulating a research problem and all the things that you have done till now for the purpose of your research study.
Then, ask yourself about your enthusiasm. Do you have enough resources to step up? If you are quite satisfied, then you forward to undertaking your research work. You can change any of your plans in the light of reality if requires.
THE RESEARCH DESIGN
Part 1 (The Research Design)
Part 2 (Covering Case Study; Causal and Cohort Design)
Part 3 (Cross-Sectional; Descriptive; Experimental; and Exploratory Research)
The content of this video is quite longer than the other, please be patient in listening and reading the content of the presentation. Thanks!
Part 4 (Historical, Longitudinal, Observational, and Philosophical Design)
SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS IN CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH
A criminological research question is a question about some aspect of crime or criminals that you seek to answer through the collection and analysis of firsthand, verifiable, empirical data. The types of questions that can be asked are virtually limitless. Examples are the following:
“Are children who are violent more likely than nonviolent children to use violence as adults?”
“Does the race of victim who is killed influence whether someone is sentenced to death rather than life imprisonment?”
“Why do some kinds of neighborhoods have more crime than others? Is it due to the kinds of people who live there or characteristics of the
the neighborhood itself?”
“Does community policing reduce the crime rate?”
“Has the Philippine government’s war on drugs done anything to reduce the use of illegal drugs?”
So many research questions are possible in criminology that it is more of a challenge to specify what does not qualify as a social research question than to specify what does. But that does not mean it is easy to specify a research question. In fact, formulating a good research question can be surprisingly difficult.
We can break the process into three stages: identifying one or more questions for study, refining the questions, and then evaluating the questions.
(1) Identifying Criminological Research Questions
Formulating a research question is often an intensely personal process in addition to being a scientific or professional one. Research questions may emerge from your “personal troubles,” as Mills (1959) put it, or your personal experiences. These troubles or experiences could range from how you felt when you were picked up by the police and perhaps arrested when you were a teenager for something you did not do to the awareness you may have that crime is not randomly distributed within a city but that there seem to be “good” or safe parts of town and “bad” or unsafe areas.
Can you think of other possible research questions that flow from your own experience in the world? The experience of others is another fruitful source of research questions. Knowing a relative who was abused by a spouse, seeing a TV special about violence, or reading a gang member’s autobiography can stimulate questions about general criminological processes.
Can you draft a research question based on a relative’s experiences, a TV show, or a book? Other researchers may also pose interesting questions for you to study. Most research articles end with some suggestions for additional research that highlight unresolved issues. Any issue of a journal in your field is likely to have comments that point toward unresolved issues.
The primary source of research questions for many criminologists is criminological theory. As you will soon learn, the criminological theory provides an explanation as to why crime occurs, or why it occurs in some places and under some conditions but not others. Theory, then, is a very rich source of research ideas. Some researchers spend much of their careers conducting research intended to refine an answer to one central
question. For example, you may find a rational choice theory to be a useful approach to understanding diverse forms of social behavior, like crime, because you think people do seem to make decisions on the basis of personal cost-benefit calculations.
So you may ask whether the rational choice theory can explain why some people commit crimes and others do not, or why some people decide to quit committing crimes while others continue their criminal ways.
Finally, some research questions have very pragmatic sources. You may focus on a research question posed by someone else because doing so seems to be to your professional or financial advantage. Some criminologists conduct research on specific questions posed by a funding source in what is termed a request for proposals (RFP).
(2) Refining Criminological Research Questions
As you have perhaps surmised by now, the problem is not so much coming up with interesting criminological questions for research as focusing on a problem of manageable size. We are often interested in much more than we can reasonably investigate with our limited time and resources (or the limited resources of a funding agency).
Researchers may worry about staking a research project (and thereby a grant) on a particular problem and so address several research questions at once, often in a jumbled fashion. It may also seem risky to focus on a research question that may lead to results discrepant with our own cherished assumptions about the social world.
The best way to avoid these problems is to develop the research question one bit at a time with a step-by-step strategy. Do not keep hoping that the perfect research question will just spring forth from your pen. Instead, develop a list of possible research questions as you go along. Narrow your list to the most interesting, most workable candidates. Repeat this process as long as it helps to improve your research questions.
Keep in mind that the research on which you are currently working will likely generate additional research questions for you to answer.
(3) Evaluating Criminological Research Questions
In the third stage of selecting a criminological research question, you evaluate the best candidate against the criteria for good social research questions: feasibility given the time and resources available, social importance, and scientific relevance (King, Keohane, & Verba 1994).
The research question in the Domestic Violence Experiment, “Does the formal sanction of police arrest versus nonarrest inhibit domestic violence?” certainly meets the criteria of social importance and scientific relevance, but it would not be a feasible question for a student project because it would require you to try to get the cooperation of a police department.
Feasibility
You must be able to conduct any study within the timeframe and resources you have. If time is short, questions that involve long-term change—for example, “If a state has recently changed its law so that it now permits capital punishment for those convicted of murder, does it eventually see a reduction in the homicide rate over time?”—may not be feasible.
This is an interesting and important question, but one that requires years of data collection and research. Another issue is the people or groups to whom you can expect to gain access. Although well-experienced researchers may be granted access to police or correctional department files to do their research, less seasoned and less well-known researchers or students may not be granted such access.
Social Importance
Criminological research is not a simple undertaking, so you must focus on a substantive area that you feel is important and that is either important to the discipline or important for public policy. You also need to feel personally motivated to carry out the study; there is little point in trying to answer a question that does not interest you.
In addition, you should consider whether the research question is important to other people. Will an answer to the research question make a difference for society? Again, the Domestic Violence Experiment is an exemplary case. If that study showed that a certain type of police response to domestic violence reduced the risk of subsequent victimization, a great deal of future violence could be prevented.
But clearly, criminology and criminal justice are not wanting for important research questions.
Scientific Relevance
Every research question in criminology should be grounded in the existing empirical literature. By grounded we mean the research we do must be informed by what others before us have done on the topic. Whether you formulate a research question because you have been stimulated by an academic article or because you want to investigate a current public policy problem, you must turn to the criminological literature to find out what has already been learned about this question.
The impact on the theory that had been posed before and its effect in the scientific community must be considered.
HYPOTHESIZING IDEA
Hypotheses can be worded in several different ways, and identifying the independent and dependent variables is sometimes difficult. When in doubt, try to rephrase the hypothesis as an if-then statement: “If the independent variable increases (or decreases), then the dependent variable increases (or decreases).” The table below presents several hypotheses with their independent and dependent variables and their if-then equivalents.
Criminological researchers can find many questions to study, but not all questions are equally worthy. Those that warrant the expense and effort of social research are feasible, socially important, and scientifically relevant.
ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD HYPOTHESIS
As a research hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in a study, you may consider drawing a hypothesis from previously published research based on the theory.
A good research hypothesis involves more effort than just a guess. In particular, your hypothesis may begin with a question that could be further explored through background research.
To help you formulate a promising research hypothesis, you should ask yourself the following questions:
[1] Is the language clear and focused?
[2] What is the relationship between your hypothesis and your research topic?
[3] Is your hypothesis testable? If yes, then how?
[4] What are the possible explanations that you might want to explore?
[5] Does your hypothesis include both an independent and dependent variable?
[6] Can you manipulate your variables without hampering the ethical standards?
Types of Research Hypothesis
Research hypothesis can be classified into seven categories as stated below:
(1) Simple Hypothesis
It predicts the relationship between a single dependent variable and a single independent variable.
(2) Complex Hypothesis
It predicts the relationship between two or more independent and dependent variables.
(3) Directional Hypothesis
It specifies the expected direction to be followed to determine the relationship between variables and is derived from theory. Furthermore, it implies the researcher’s intellectual commitment to a particular outcome.
(4) Non-directional Hypothesis
It does not predict the exact direction or nature of the relationship between the two variables. The non-directional hypothesis is used when there is no theory involved or when findings contradict previous research.
(5) Associative and Causal Hypothesis
Associative hypothesis defines interdependency between variables. A change in one variable results in the change of the other variable. On the other hand, the causal hypothesis proposes an effect on the dependent due to manipulation of the independent variable.
(6) Null Hypothesis
It states a negative statement to support the researcher’s findings that there is no relationship between the two variables.
(7) Alternative Hypothesis
It states that there is a relationship between the two variables of the study and that the results are significant to the research topic.
How to Formulate an Effective Research Hypothesis
A testable hypothesis is not a simple statement. It is rather an intricate statement that needs to offer a clear introduction to a scientific experiment, its intentions, and the possible outcomes. However, there are some important things to consider when building a compelling hypothesis.
[1] State the problem that you are trying to solve.
“Make sure that the hypothesis clearly defines the topic and the focus of the experiment.”
[2] Try to write the hypothesis as an if-then statement.
“Follow this template: If a specific action is taken, then a certain outcome is expected.”
[3] Define the variables
Independent variables are the ones that are manipulated, controlled, or changed. Independent variables are isolated from other factors of the study.
Dependent variables, as the name suggests are dependent on other factors of the study. They are influenced by the change in the independent variable.
RESEARCH SAMPLING AND DATA COLLECTION
THE QUANTITATIVE DATA COLLECTION
Quantitative data collection methods rely on random sampling and structured data collection instruments that fit diverse experiences into predetermined response categories. They produce results that are easy to summarize, compare, and generalize.
Quantitative research is concerned with testing hypotheses derived from theory and/or being able to estimate the size of a phenomenon of interest. Depending on the research question, participants may be randomly assigned to different treatments. If this is not feasible, the researcher may collect data on participant and situational characteristics in order to statistically control for their influence on the dependent, or outcome, variable.
If the intent is to generalize from the research participants to a larger population, the researcher will employ probability sampling to select participants. A probability sampling method is any method of sampling that utilizes some form of random selection. In order to have a random selection method, you must set up some process or procedure that assures that the different units in your population have equal probabilities of being chosen.
Simple examples of the random selection are picking a name out of a hat or choosing the short straw. Computers are used for generating random selection in more complex projects.
Typical quantitative data gathering strategies include:
Administering surveys with closed‐ended questions (e.g., face-to-face and telephone interviews, mail questionnaires, etc.)
Experiments/clinical trials.
Observing and recording well‐defined events (e.g., counting the number of patients waiting in an emergency at specified times of the day).
Obtaining relevant data from management information systems.
INTERVIEWS
In Quantitative research (survey research), interviews are more structured than in Qualitative research. In a structured interview, the researcher asks a standard set of questions and nothing more.
Telephone interviews
Advantages:
Less time consuming
Less expensive
The researcher has ready access to anyone who has a landline telephone.
Higher response rate than the mail questionnaire.
Can be fully automated using CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) saving data processing time.
Disadvantages:
The response rate is not as high as the face‐to‐face interview.
The sample may be biased as only those people who have landline phones are contacted (excludes people who do not have a phone, or only have cell phones).
Face‐to‐face interviews
Advantages:
Enables the researcher to establish rapport with potential participants and therefore gain their cooperation.
Yields the highest response rates in survey research.
Allows the researcher to clarify ambiguous answers and when appropriate, seek follow‐up information.
Disadvantages:
Impractical when large samples are involved
Can be time-consuming and expensive.
Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI): is a form of personal interviewing, but instead of completing a questionnaire, the interviewer brings along a laptop or hand‐held computer to enter the information directly into the database.
Advantages:
Saves time involved in processing the data.
Saves the interviewer from carrying around hundreds of questionnaires.
Disadvantages:
Can be expensive to set up.
Requires that interviewers have computer and typing skills.
QUESTIONNAIRES
Questionnaires often make use of checklists and rating scales. These devices help simplify and quantify people’s behaviors and attitudes. A checklist is a list of behaviors, characteristics, or other entities the researcher is looking for. Either the researcher or survey participant simply checks whether each item on the list is observed, present or true, or vice versa.
A rating scale is more useful when a behavior needs to be evaluated on a continuum. They are also known as Likert scales. (Leedy and Ormrod, 2001)
Mail questionnaires
Advantages:
Can be sent to a large number of people.
Saves the researcher time and money compared to interviewing.
People are more truthful while responding to the questionnaires regarding controversial issues in particular due to the fact that their responses are anonymous.
Allow the respondent to answer at their leisure.
Disadvantages:
In most cases, the majority of people who receive questionnaires don’t return them.
Therefore:
o Over‐sampling may be necessary if doing a one‐time mail out in order to get enough completed questionnaires to be generalizable to the population.
o Follow‐up reminders to participants encouraging them to complete the questionnaire may be necessary, thereby increasing the time and cost to conduct the study.
o May need to offer incentives to increase the response rate.
Time–mail surveys take longer than other types of surveys.
Web‐based questionnaires:
A new and inevitably growing methodology is the use of Internet-based research. This would mean receiving an e‐mail on which you would click on an address that would take you to a secure website to fill in a questionnaire.
Advantages:
This type of research is often quicker and less detailed.
Very cost-effective.
Disadvantages:
Excludes people who do not have a computer or are unable to access a computer.
Need to have access to email addresses.
Many worksites have screening mechanisms in place blocking access to employee emails.
The validity of such surveys may be in question as people might be in a hurry to complete them and so might not give accurate responses.
QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTION
Qualitative data collection methods play an important role in impact evaluation by providing information useful to understand the processes behind observed results and assess changes in people’s perceptions of their well‐being. Furthermore, qualitative methods can be used to improve the quality of survey‐based quantitative evaluations by helping generate evaluation hypotheses; strengthening the design of survey questionnaires, and expanding or clarifying quantitative evaluation findings.
These methods are characterized by the following attributes:
They tend to be open‐ended and have less structured protocols (i.e., researchers may change the data collection strategy by adding, refining, or dropping techniques or informants).
They rely more heavily on interactive interviews; respondents may be interviewed several times to follow up on a particular issue, clarify concepts or check the reliability of data.
They use triangulation to increase the credibility of their findings (i.e., researchers rely on multiple data collection methods to check the authenticity of their results).
Generally, their findings are not generalizable to any specific population; rather each case study produces a single piece of evidence that can be used to seek general patterns among different studies of the same issue.
Regardless of the kinds of data involved, data collection in a qualitative study takes a great deal of time. The researcher needs to record any potentially useful data thoroughly, accurately, and systematically, using field notes, sketches, audiotapes, photographs, and other suitable means.
The data collection methods must observe the ethical principles of research. The qualitative methods most commonly used in evaluation can be classified into three broad categories:
In‐depth interview
Observation methods
Document review