Who identifies research problems?
by Janet Salmons, Research Community Manager for SAGE Methodspace
Let’s begin this quarter’s exploration of research design by raising questions about how the research problem or topic is defined, by whom.
Whether you decide to conduct a large, complex study or a small project for a course assignment, you must begin by deciding what to study.
The research problem addresses what researchers perceive is wrong, missing, or puzzling, or what requires changing, in the world. Presentations of the research problem typically set the stage for the study that will be, or that was, conducted by offering evidence that the problem exists and for whom and by establishing the significance of the problem and why it requires formal inquiry. (Given, 2008 p. 734)
Learn more! Register now for a free webinar on January 31, 2024, How to connect the study’s methodology with publication options.
What evidence signifies the need for formal inquiry and serves as the foundation for a research design? As a researcher, how will you perceive what is wrong, identify important concerns that are missing from scholarly literature, or find critical issues that require change in the world? As researchers, are we the only ones who can and should identify problems that merit study?
In 2022 Methodspace focused on Research Relevance and explored questions about whether and how scholarly research matters. The implications go beyond research impact, or perhaps pre-empt considerations of impact, with the suggestion that we think about how, where, and for whom research matters from the very beginning. As McCormack (2011)observes:
[I}t is fair to say that the debates about impact in most research disciplines largely adopt a linear and traditional model of knowledge production, with ‘impact’ considered towards the end of projects and usually as part of (passive) dissemination strategies. Such approaches promulgate the distinction between knowledge producers and knowledge users. (p. 112)
How can consideration of relevance to the field, to practice, to impactful change-making in the world be woven into the formulation of research topics and problems? In the 2007 book Engaged Scholarship: A Guide to Organizational and Social Research, Andrew Van de Ven suggested that we need to engage with the people who have direct first-hand knowledge and experience with the issues and contexts associated with the inquiry. He coined the term “engaged scholarship” and defined it as:
a participative form of research for obtaining the advice and perspectives of key stakeholders (researchers, users, clients, sponsors, and practitioners) to understand a complex social problem. By exploiting differences in the kinds of knowledge that scholars and other stakeholders can bring forth on a problem...engaged scholarship produces knowledge that is more penetrating and insightful than when scholars or practitioners work on the problems alone. (Van de Ven, 2007 p. 9)
Van de Ven’s (2007) approach makes the case for principles of engagement with stakeholders and others who have personal or professional knowledge. He points out that the less you know the greater the need to engage with others who can instruct and ground you in the problem domain (p. 268). Since 2007 many forms of engaged scholarship have emerged that apply these principles in various fields of study, such as:
Community Engaged Scholarship (CES): researchers and community stakeholders’ contributions, in their respective areas of expertise, co-create knowledge that addresses community-identified cares and concerns, as well as serving the public good (O’Meara, 2018).
Publicly Engaged Scholarship (PES): In fields of public administration and public policy, “scholars have responded to changing demographics within higher education as well as the contemporary demands of societies to address challenging issues of inequality, environmental degradation, and democratic exclusion, among others, by developing less hierarchical and more cooperative forms of scholarship” (Eatman et al., 2018) p. 532.
Van de Ven advocated that these principles should underpin all research methodologies and for this to be an explicit criterion in the establishment of research designs. That said, the degree of engagement might vary greatly. In some cases it involves developing relationships by meeting and talking with people, or observing the culture, community, or organization. For others it will involve engaging with relevant reports, publications or media – outside of scholarly literature – by people close to the situation. These four categories, adapted from Van de Ven’s descriptions, offer some options:
Informed Research: Research problem is identified and defined with the advice and feedback of stakeholders. Researcher is responsible for conducting study activities.
Collaborative Research: Research problem is identified and defined by the researcher and project partners. Research team includes stakeholders who share study activities to co-produce knowledge.
Action Research: Research problem, and intentions for interventions or change to address it, are identified and defined by the researcher and project partners. Action research, or participatory action research, includes stakeholders in research design, plans, conduct, and dissemination/implementation. Stringer and Ortiz Aragón (2020) introduce their excellent text with this key point: “Action research works on the assumption that those closest to the impact of [contemporary] issues are “experts” in understanding many of the realities of their own lives and should therefore be directly involved in addressing them” (p. 6).
Design/Evaluation Research: Problem is identified and defined by the client who engages the researcher. Researcher develops and evaluates the client’s policy, program design or activities.
The degree of engagement shifts with each of these options, moving from input and feedback from stakeholders to actively sharing responsibilities and decision-making. With informed One is not inherently better than another, the appropriate choice will fit the particular situation. For example, not everyone has the time and resources necessary to build relationships needed for collaborative or action research. However, as researchers, any stakeholder engagement offers an opportunity to learn from and with those who know, experience, and understand the situation and can thus help define a more relevant problem to study than we might otherwise determine.
Questions to consider to increase engagement at the problem definition stage
Who understands the domain you want to study, the population, the setting, and/or the culture important to the topic(s) of interest?
Who is feeling the impact of issues at hand, and who will feel the impact of change?
What do they read: are there publications, blogs, newsletters, reports, or other sources that get into the issues at hand? When you look at these sources, are there respected experts or thought leaders who articulate the issues?
Where do they share concerns, thoughts, feelings about the issues? Online or local groups?
Do stakeholder discussions point to other disciplines or literatures you should explore to get a fuller understanding of the problem domain?
If/when you meet with stakeholders, listen!
If you want to ask for input, feedback, or collaborative involvement, what can you offer in return? Beyond the usual incentives, can you offer to share findings, practical recommendations, training, or other assistance?
Avoid “helicopter” research, especially when crossing cultures. See the Global Code Of Conduct For Research In Resource-Poor Settings.
Learn more!
Find original posts, curated open-access reading lists, video interviews and more on action, collaborative, and evaluative research in these Methodspace posts from the archives.
Learn about action and participatory research methods, and ways to design and carry out research with, not on, communities.
View the webinar and find a multidisciplinary collection of posts and videos from Alfredo Ortiz Aragón, Rosalind Beadle, Ernie Stringer and their colleagues.
Colin Forster and Rachel Eperjesi co-authors of the second edition of Action Research for Student Teachers offer tips for researchers who want to study children in classroom settings.
Decolonisation is not a peripheral but central concern to social research for change. Learn more from Caroline Lenette, author of Participatory Action Research: Ethics and Decolonization.
Learn about Sage books about designing, conducting, and analyzing data for action research and other participatory methods across multiple disciplines. You will find open-access preview chapters and a discount code.
Professor Lesley Wood is experienced with engaged, participatory research. In this post she offers researchers advice about how to think about your role.
Professor Lesley Wood explains why it is important to engage with stakeholders and participants, and how to build these practices into your own research.
In this guest post Catherine Collins describes ways to put action research principles into practice.
Using action research to understand Covid-19 experiences, a guest post by Hege Gravdahl Garelius.
The 11 co-authors of “Self-in-Field Action Research in Natural Spaces of Encounter: Inclusion, Learning, and Organizational Change” discuss their research.
Read this interesting post by Tineke Abma, Barbara Groot, Alie Weerman, Frederiek Overbeek, part of the Action Research series for October 2020.
Read this guest post about collaboration and action research by Melissa Parenti.
Reflections about co-creation in research.
Learn about how action researcher Ros Beadle invited Aboriginal women to tell their own stories.
Listen to a podcast interview with Dr. Alfredo Ortiz Aragón.
Learn about action research and the work of AR+
Watch this discussion of embodied and sentient action research methods with Iñigo Retolaza Eguren.
Action research and evaluation are inter-related topics in this guest post and video from Marina Apgar and Mieke Snijder.
A discussion about engaging participants in action research in a social work context.
See this interview with Ernie Stringer and Geoff Mills to learn how he applies action research in educational contexts.
View this discussion of participatory action research methods with Ernie Stringer and Susan Young.
View a conversation between Antonio Boyd and Dr. Cherese Childers-McKee about inclusion and action research.
In this guest post Jane Shore and Sarah Singer Quast remind us of the importance of bridging research and practice, and give specific recommendations.
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Tips on assessing a course to make it relevant and useful for students’ future research.
This collection of open-access articles offers a range of strategies for evaluating your research project and process.
Want to learn more about evaluation? Looking for resources for students? Check out these articles, videos, and a free webinar series from Michael Quinn Patton and Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton.
In this interview one of co-authors of Evaluation: A Systematic Approach discusses evaluative practices.
Find over 100 resources on evaluation: books, cases, and videos, on SAGE Research Methods.
Open-access articles about cultural issues and implications for evaluative studies.
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Academic evaluation regimes set up to quantify the quality of research, individual scholars, and institutions have been widely criticized for the detrimental effects they have on academic environments and on knowledge production itself. Max Fochler and Sarah de Rijcke recently called for a more exploratory, less standardized way of doing research evaluation, with the introduction of the concept of the evaluative inquiry.
Michael Quinn Patton and Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton answer some questions about their work as evaluators and as a father-daughter co-author team.
Read about this co-creative project and methodologies for evaluating its success.
This collection of posts from the archives features posts by Steve Wallis and Bernadette Wright, authors of “Practical Mapping for Applied Research and Program Evaluation.”
Learn about the What? Why? When? How? Where? and Who? of evaluation from Michael Quinn Patton and Charmagne E. Campbell-Patton.
The May 2022 focus is on evaluation.
Crossing into new literature in unfamiliar fields, disciplines, methodologies, or cultures? Learn to evaluate it!
Action research and evaluation are inter-related topics in this guest post and video from Marina Apgar and Mieke Snijder.
Q & A about evaluation with Steve Wallis and Bernadette Peters
This post is the second of four Q & A posts with Bernadette Wright and Steve Wallis.
Bernadette Wright and Steve Wallis, Mentors-in-residence for SAGE MentorSpace this month, offer four suggestions for preparing students or professionals for an evaluation.
When counting and measuring don't tell the whole story, consider using focus groups in evaluation.
Bernadette Wright and Steve Wallis introduced knowledge mapping as a part of the evaluation profess.
Steve Wallis and Bernadette Wright introduce mapping as a way to find connections across disciplines.
In October 2019 we introduced a new topic focus on Evaluation, with Mentors-in-Residence to help us learn about it!
Anna CohenMiller helps us drawing on the 4C's of research: Compassion, Community, Care and Collaboration into our research praxis to develop as individuals and researchers.
Learning while doing: collaborating on a book about collaboration.
This collection of open-access SAGE journal articles includes a variety of perspectives on collaborative research and writing.
Julie Reeves discusses some important points about internal and external collaborations in this interview and post.
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Research and writing can be solitary activities. This post from Natalia Reinoso Chávez follows one by Janet Salmons about how two independent researchers have found value in collaborative friendship.
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Dr. Majbritt Lyck-Bowen offers suggestions for collaborative research assignments that include everyone in an online class.
The Director and Assistant Director of the Bass Connections program at Duke University share lessons learned and open access resources for team success in interdisciplinary collaborative research.
Big Data can mean the research is too big to conduct on your own. In this post, find four types of research collaborations involving Big Data, with open-access examples.
Researchers often collaborate with community partners, as discussed in this guest post from PhD candidates from Duke University’s Cultural Anthropology and African American Studies programs.
The focus for October 2022 is on collaboration. What do we mean when we use this term?
In this post Becky De Oliveira discusses lessons learned and practical tips based on her recent doctoral research with older research participants.
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Read this guest post about collaboration and action research by Melissa Parenti.
Interdependence counters isolation some feel as indie researchers and scholars. Friendship helps, as discussed in this video conversation.
How do students learn to use research for applied problem-solving? Learn about the Story+ program internship model at Duke University.
Dr. Diringer discusses fieldwork with partners in the Amazon.
What do faculty members learn when they guide students in research projects? Three Bass Connections program faculty discuss their experiences.
Teaching research with field experiences.
This post offers a practitioner’s view of a university-bank research project with Bass Connections faculty and students.
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What does "Interdisciplinarity" mean for researchers? Key principles are outlined in this post.
Learn about interdisciplinary research projects that engage faculty and students.
How can you learn to be a researcher, particularly in emerging fields of study? Hear this student panel discuss what and how they learned through hands-on research projects.
What happens when faculty and students work together to research real-world problems? Read about the process and examples used in the Bass Connections program.
Learn how interdisciplinary teams can deploy a range of research methods to develop creative, public-facing outputs
Learn why and how the Bass Connections program operates interdisciplinary, collaborative research projects and find practical advice for launching your own endeavors.
Get acquainted with the interdisciplinary faculty-student research at Duke University and learn how to adopt the model in this month’s focus.
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References
Eatman, T. K., Ivory, G., Saltmarsh, J., Middleton, M., Wittman, A., & Dolgon, C. (2018). Co-Constructing Knowledge Spheres in the Academy: Developing Frameworks and Tools for Advancing Publicly Engaged Scholarship. Urban Education, 53(4), 532-561. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085918762590
Given, L. (Ed.). (2008). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. SAGE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.
McCormack, B. (2011). Engaged scholarship and research impact: integrating the doing and using of research in practice. Journal of Research in Nursing, 16(2), 111-127. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987110393419
O’Meara, K. (2018). Accurately assessing engaged scholarship. Inside Higher Education.
Stringer, E. T., & Aragón, A. O. (2020). Action research. SAGE Publishing.
Van de Ven, A. H. (2007). Engaged scholarship : A guide for organizational and social research. Oxford University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/capella/docDetail.action?docID=10194261
Qualitative data analysis varies by methodology. Learn about approaches for action research in these open access articles.