Sources of Research Problems

Sources of Problems

• The central question for students is: "How do I find a research problem?"
• There aren't any hard and fast rules for finding a problem.
• Experience, deductions from theory, and related literature are three important sources for research problems.
• Non-education sources may also be useful.
• These are appropriate in both quantitative and qualitative research.

Experience

• A fruitful source for beginning researchers is their own experiences as educational practitioners.
• Teachers have intuitions about new relationships.
• Many strategies and practices have come into and gone out of fashion in education because they were based more on opinion than on scientific research findings.
• Teachers can ask questions and gather research evidence about the effectiveness of certain classroom practices.
• Recent legislation has called for evidence-based education, meaning that educational interventions and practices should be evaluated to determine their effectiveness before being put into practice.
• A high school teacher might question strategies to improve the achievement of at-risk students.
• An elementary teacher may have questions about a method to teach reading.
• Students who have not had teaching experience can get ideas from discussions and reading in education courses.
• Make a list of ideas, noting things that you question.

Theories

• Theories are a good source of problems for research.

• A theory is a set of interrelated statements, principles, and propositions that specify the relationships among variables.

• The application of the general principles embodied in a theory to specific educational problems is only hypothetical until research empirically confirms it.

• A beginning researcher can find an interesting theory and then make a prediction or hypothesis about what could be expected to happen in a particular situation and design a study that tests the hypothesis.

• For example, social comparison theory suggests that students form academic self-concepts by comparing their self-perceived academic accomplishments to some standard or frame of reference.

• The frame of reference for most students is the perceived academic abilities of their classmates.

• A hypothesis that could be deduced from this theory is "Gifted students placed in selective homogeneous classes will have lower academic self-concepts over time than equally gifted students in heterogeneous or mixed-ability classes."

• This prediction could be investigated by studying the change over time in the academic self-concept of gifted students in homogeneous classes compared with that of gifted students placed in regular heterogeneous classes.

• Another theory that has implications for education is Erik Erikson's (1967) classic theory of personality development, which describes psychosocial development in terms of stages throughout the life span.

• Adolescence has as its major task the development of a positive self-concept or, to use Erikson's term, a strong sense of identity.

• Adolescents who have achieved a sense of identity are more independent, more socially competent, better able to cope with stress, and have higher self-esteem.

• However, if the adolescent does not resolve the identity crisis, a sense of inferiority and personal alienation may result.

• Students who have committed violent acts at school often report feelings of alienation.

• A researcher interested in studying school violence might ask:

  • "Are there school practices that may contribute to feelings of isolation in some students?"
  • "How can these students be identified?"
  • "Would an intervention designed to improve adolescents' self-image be effective?"

• To answer the latter question, the researcher would make a prediction (hypothesis) about the effect of the intervention and proceed to design a study.

• A qualitative researcher might conduct a case study of an adolescent who has committed an act of school violence or of one who has been a victim of bullying.

Choosing a Theory

• Not all theories are equally useful to a beginning researcher.

• An essential characteristic of a good theory is that it is testable.

• The theory chosen should be one from which the researcher can make concise predictions (hypotheses) about what will happen in new situations and can verify these predictions through empirical observation.

• As the hypotheses are supported in research studies, they become part of the theory that adds to the body of knowledge.

• However, if the theory cannot be tested, it serves no useful purpose.

• A good theory is not only testable but also falsifiable, meaning that a theory is capable of being proven wrong.

• It is possible to gather evidence that contradicts the theory.

• A theory that explains why a tornado touched down in a certain area of a town by stating that the people there are being punished for their sins is not a theory that can be proven wrong. Thus, it is not a useful theory.

• Sir Karl Popper argued that claims to knowledge "can never be proven or fully justified, they can only be refuted" (p. 40).

• A theory cannot ever be proved to be true because theories are generalizations that apply to all possible instances of the phenomena they are trying to explain, and it is not possible to test it against all possibilities.

• We say only that a theory has been supported; the more support it gets in a variety of research studies, the more confidence we have in its usefulness.

• However, it is possible to disprove a theory by gathering negative evidence that contradicts it.

• According to Popper, this is how most scientific progress is achieved.

• Neuman and Kreuger (2003) give a useful example: "If I want to test the claim that all swans are white, and I find 1,000 white swans, I have not totally confirmed the causal law or pattern. All it takes is locating one black swan to refute my claim -- one piece of negative evidence" (p. 40).

• Negative evidence indicates that the theory needs to be rejected or at least revised.

• To summarize, a good theory is one for which evidence can be gathered that will either support or refute the theory. Both outcomes must be possible.

• A good theory deals with some significant phenomenon or behavior that needs explanation, such as learning or motivation.

• A good theory provides the simplest, clearest, and most plausible explanation for the phenomenon.

• A good theory follows the principle of parsimony, which states that a theory should explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of principles.

• A good theory has internal consistency; its propositions do not contradict one another. For example, a "commonsense" theory of human separation may state "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" but also "Out of sight, out of mind."

• One could find evidence to support both propositions; thus, the theory would not be useful for predicting what might happen when people are separated.

• In summary, think of an educational, psychological, or sociological theory that you find especially interesting.

• Read a summary of the theory in journals, textbooks, or primary sources, and then ask a question.

• A theory-based research question is beneficial because the results can be tied to a body of existing knowledge.

• The research can verify or fail to verify the theory, and it will most likely suggest other questions for research.

Research in the Public Eye

• In November 2009, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article claiming that mental health experts feared that technology addiction would lead to increased incidence of attention deficit disorder, causing an inability to analyze things with any depth.
• They quoted Dr. John Ratey, associate clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, as using the term "acquired attention deficit disorder" and describing a short-circuiting of the brain's ability to process details.

Related Literature

• Another valuable source of problems is the published literature in your area of interest.
• In published research you will find examples of research problems and the methods used to solve them.
• You might look at journals like Journal of Educational Psychology, American Educational Research Journal, and The Elementary School Journal, or subject-focused journals like The Reading Teacher, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Remedial and Special Education, and Child Development.
• A review of related literature in scholarly journals may help in the following ways:
  1. You may find a study that needs to be replicated. You might use a different age group, different setting, or a different population.
  2. You might be able to tweak the methodology in a way that will improve the study.
  3. You might undertake a cross-cultural study to determine if the conclusions from research in one culture apply in other cultures. As studies are repeated at different times and in different places, and as the findings are supported by each study, our confidence in the scientific validity of the findings increases.
  4. Researchers have conducted numerous replications of Piaget's famous studies (1999) of the development of moral judgment in children.
  5. These studies used Piaget's basic approach but investigated the development of moral judgment in children of different socioeconomic classes, in children of the same chronological age but differing in intelligence level, in children differing in the extent of their participation in their own age groups, in children differing in the nature of parental discipline experienced in the home, and in both boys and girls.
  6. Recently, other investigators have used techniques that differed from Piaget's in their attempts to confirm his findings and conclusions.
  7. In general, the large body of research stemming from Piaget's investigations has supported his original conclusions. Thus, a single research study, if it deals with a significant problem and its findings are exciting, can inspire many other studies.
  8. You may find a question that represents the next logical step in the research on a problem.
  9. The outcomes of one study very often lead to new questions.
  10. In the concluding sections of their research reports, researchers often describe new questions that have arisen and suggest additional studies that should be done.
  11. A productive way to extend studies is to introduce new variables into a research design for further control and for determining the effects of interactions among variables.
  12. Many multivariate studies are extensions of earlier single-variable investigations (see Chapter 11).

Reviews of Research

• Reviews of research that integrate and summarize studies on specific topics can be very useful for identifying a research problem.
• Those produced by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) are particularly useful.
• The Review of Educational Research, published quarterly by AERA since 1931, reviews and integrates educational research. It generally does not publish empirical data, but reviews articles that are thought to be useful to researchers.
• Each volume highlights different opinions and interpretations of research articles on a different topic.
• For example, the topic of volume 80 (1) 2010 was "Equity, Access, Diversity, and Justice," and the theme of volume 80 (2) was "Language and Literacy."
• In 1973, AERA launched the annual Review of Research in Education to provide summaries of research that has been done, that is being done, and that needs to be done in a specific broad topic each year.
• In addition to integrating and summarizing the work in a field, it promotes discussion and controversy about research problems.
• Volume 34 (2010) focused on "What Counts as Evidence in Educational Settings: Rethinking Equity, Diversity, and Reform in the 21st Century."
• Approximately every 10 years, AERA publishes the Handbook of Research on Teaching (Gage, 1963; Travers, 1973; Wittrock, 1985; Richardson, 2001).
• This volume lists, summarizes, and critically analyzes research on teaching characterized by evolving research methodologies and diverse conceptual frameworks.
• The fourth edition is composed of 51 chapters from 81 authors, all of whom are experts in their respective fields.
• Comprehensive bibliographies on selected topics are included, providing possibilities for further research.
• Among the topics in the fourth edition are policies for licensing and assessment of teachers, special education, middle school teaching, teaching as a moral activity, and teaching physical education.
• AERA's Encyclopedia of Educational Research (2004), designed to present "a critical synthesis and interpretation of reported educational research," contains articles written by prominent scholars that provide well-documented discussions of recent trends and developments, as well as traditional topics.
• The extensive bibliographies may provide suggestions for additional research.
• This four-volume encyclopedia includes more than 200 topics. It is a good basic source for preliminary overviews of research in various areas.
• There are also more specific reviews, like Handbook of Research on Math Teaching and Learning (Grouws, 2007) and Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (Lapp & Fisher, eds., 2011).
• For more information on related literature, see Chapter 4.

Noneducation Sources

• You can adapt theories or procedures you encounter in other fields to apply to education.
• Often, movements that originate outside a profession lead to new paths of research.
• The women's movement has led researchers to study gender stereotyping in educational materials, the influence of schools on the learning of sex roles, gender differences in achievement and personality, and so forth.
• The civil rights movement led to many studies about the education of minority children.
• The AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) epidemic has stimulated a great deal of research on the best procedures and materials to use to acquaint young people in school with the danger of the disease and how best to protect themselves from it.
• Recent research has looked at the effect of violence in television shows or computer games on children's behavior in school.
• The inspiration for much valuable research in education comes from such noneducation sources.

Qualitative Research Problems

• Beginning qualitative researchers can look to their personal experiences and interests, to theory, to the professional literature, or to current social issues and real-world concerns to find a potential problem.
• You need to identify an area or a topic about which you have a real interest.
• For example, you might be interested in how learning-disabled students are integrated into regular high school classrooms.
• It would be interesting to do a case study of the school to determine what the faculty did and how they did it to bring about such positive changes in an elementary school in an impoverished area of a large city that has been completely turned around by its teachers.
• Once researchers have selected the initial focus of inquiry, they need to identify exactly what they want to know about that topic.
• The focus of inquiry is thus narrowed to the aspect of the phenomenon that will be explored in the research study.
• The focus of inquiry mentioned previously can be stated as follows:
  • "How do other students treat learning-disabled students?"
  • "How do the learning-disabled respond?"
• The qualitative researcher intuitively arrives at hunches about the phenomenon, he or she does not formulate an initial hypothesis that the study tests.
• Suppose the general topic is bullying behavior in elementary schools.
• In a qualitative study, a researcher might ask how and why this behavior develops and could use naturalistic observation to investigate it in an elementary school.
• The investigator could use video cameras and remote microphones to record instances of children being exposed repeatedly to negative verbal or physical actions on the part of one or more classmates.
• The researcher would want to interview the bullies to explore their thoughts, motives, and goals.
• The victims would also be interviewed to learn about their feelings.
• The researcher might also examine gender differences in bullying behavior and the reaction of peers to this behavior.