How to Write a Clear Dissertation Problem Statement (Step-by-Step)

What I want to talk about today is the problem statement or the dissertation problem statement. My name is Steve Tippins. I've sat on over 300 dissertation committees, either as a chair or a committee member. I've coached over a hundred people to complete their dissertation. And my goal is to help you finish and change the world. Some people think this is really simple, but it's the foundation of your entire study. So. So we're going to talk about problem statements and what to think about and say in them. And you know, how you move on from your problem statement to the next phase and ultimately to finishing your dissertation. So first, let's start with problems. So what if you've got a bad problem statement or a problem statement that doesn't work? Well, if your problem statement doesn't work, you're not going anywhere. You're not going to do anything. You're problem statement is based from and in the literature. The problem to be studied here is it is not known what. So that's a problem. The problem statement and a bad problem statement goes something like this. The problem to be studied is the industry is not using this result. And when they use this result, it will save them billions of dollars or make people, you know, not be hungry anymore or whatever that problem statement means. You already know the answer. And if you already know the answer, why are you doing the study? This is more of an advocacy statement as opposed to here's a problem we don't know the answer to. How do I find a problem statement? Where do I get my problem statement? The easy and easiest way to find your problem statement is you're reading an article and you get to the end where they talk about research and they say future research should be done on. And they've given you an opening for a problem. Now there is a limit to that. Many people will write articles saying, hey, more research should be done on bananas, when they've already started and are well along the way on research on bananas because they're trying to pave a path forward for them. Other thing you want to watch out for there is when was this article written? If you're looking at something from 1987 and they're saying future research should be done, that's 38 years ago. You may not want to be thinking about that because it's probably already done, if it's valid. So that's the easiest place to find a problem. Probably, though, the path that most people take is reading their literature, finding out what has been done. For example, let's use school lunches school lunches have been shown to improve attendance or improve grades in middle school students. Has the study been done in high school students or in elementary school students? Or has it been done in middle school students in only an urban setting? So your problem statements evolve out of the literature. What has been done? And one quick caveat. We don't make huge leaps in academic research. It's little teeny bits of information we add to the pile and over time we begin to say we know something. So. So our problem statements are discrete, doable and small. So in my mind, ultimately, what makes a good problem statement is a couple of things. One, is it doable? Hey, the problem is we don't know the impact on gravity and Mars on gerbils. Well, first of all you're going to get gerbils to Mars, then you got to measure it. You know, it's not doable, it's too expensive, all kinds of stuff. So can you do it? Is it got limited scope? Oh, the problem is we don't know the impact of certain diets in 12 year olds and on their performance on the, I don't know, sat, which is going to be five years later. Are you going to be able to follow those people for five years? Or in other studies we don't know the impact of diet and 20 year olds on their mortality. Are you going to be able to go 80 plus years collecting this diet data? That might be an interesting study, but is it doable for a dissertation? Do you really want to pay tuition for 80 years? You also, not only must your problem statement be doable, but it's got to be related to your field. It's got to be supported by theory and you know, you've got to be a result that people want to know. Now here's a problem statement or type of problem statement I hear people proposing frequently. They say research has not been done on. The fact that research has not been done doesn't mean it's a valid problem statement. Perhaps research hasn't been done because it's a question nobody wants to answer or it's too big a leap. So you want to say, not that research hasn't been done, but there's a gap in the research when you find the problem, hey, they've done this study in this way, but it hasn't been done in another way. Then you want to structure your problem statement and it is not known the impact of X on Y or the impact of using certain textbooks has not been explored. First thing you want to do is look at your Institution because they may have specific guidelines they want or specific words they want. But basically the problem is we don't know something. That's the problem. You follow from the problem to other things, but we start with, hey, we don't know. It's not known. The perceptions of the lived experience of this group of people has not been reported. That becomes the foundation for your problem. And you ultimately should be able to say or write your problem statement in one sentence. Let's talk about some examples of problem statements. And a professor once told me is you don't know your research unless until you can explain it to somebody in one sentence or maybe even one paragraph. So the problem statement becomes a good place to do that. Let's talk about a quantitative problem statement. The impact of diet or the impact of any variable, whether it be temperature, the impact of moon flares on stock prices. So we've got a dependent variable, stock prices and moon flares, independent variable. So we're trying to explore the impact of A on B. Or it can be more complicated than that. But let's keep it simple. In a qualitative study, depending on the type of qualitative study, let's say it's phenomenological, where we talk about lived experience. The lived experience of third grade teachers in urban setting related to changing a math curriculum has not been explored. Though we're trying to set up the parameters of what don't we know? Hey, we don't know what third grade teachers who've changed the math curriculum, what they think about it, what they went through to do that. Those are examples of basic problem statements. And if you want to do a quantitative problem statement, we start with the impact of or. One thing you never want to do in a problem statement is ask it in a yes or no format. Is the price of milk correlated with weight gain in infants? Well, then your answer is yes or no. I mean, there's not much you can talk about it. What is the relationship? It is not known. The relationship between the price of milk and weight gain in infants is a much better way to begin your exploration. So if I look back on my experience, who's done well with a problem statement, who has had problems? Poor word. But with a problem statement, the people who have agendas, they know what the answer is going to be. They therefore put that in their problem. They have problems, they have issues. Because the faculty go back and forth with them saying, but you already know the answer to this. Why are we doing this? The people who understand how to phrase this in such a way that this is an exploration. We don't solve problems, we answer questions. So if your problem statement is a question, you're much further along than people who say, I know that this is going to help people be retained in college. That's not a problem statement, that's a solution you already have. In some schools you're asked to come up with a general problem, then ultimately a specific problem. Now ultimately you can do both of these within usually a paragraph. Let's work with education. The general problem is that we don't know what impacts teacher retention. The specific problem might then go down much more narrowly. We don't know what factors significantly impact teachers in rural settings, decisions to stay teaching. That would be kind of a quantitative approach or what are the lived experiences or what are the perceptions of retention factors of middle school teachers in an urban setting. Regarding retention, when you're setting up your problem statement, the first thing I want everybody to know is is this doable both in time? Are you asking for a problem that's going to take like 80 years to collect all the data or is it something can be reasonably done and that's what you want? Also, when you think about a problem, be thinking about your access to data. I've seen a number of people have very interesting ideas but not know whether they have access to the data. So they get all through with their proposal and then they start looking and they can't find the data. If you can't find data, then it's just a problem out in space. You want to have a problem where you know that data is going to be available, whether it's people you can interview, whether it's hard data from the US Government or surveys you're going to do and have access to people. This is something you want to be able to do. Which also means when you're doing your problem, you want to be thinking about populations that you can access. If you think, hey, I want to interview 3 year olds about what they think about a certain thing, you're looking at a protected population means you need a lot more approvals because IRBs want to make sure that individuals that are involved in studies aren't impacted. And we can't tell with three year olds. So we have to get parental permission to becomes a lot more involved. It's difficult getting permissions in the military. You want to make sure that, you know, pregnant women, we already mentioned minors, prisoners, things like that are in protected classes and may be difficult to get the answer or data that you're looking for. Keep that in Mind when working on your problem statement. So when you think about a problem statement, always remember it's the foundation of your study. It's where it all comes from. Take your time to establish a problem statement that you know is doable and that you can get data on and that you know it is doable, but it, you know doable in a reasonable time period as well. These are important things you want to remember about problem statements. But if you construct your problem statement well, it, it gives you a great leaping off point to start and finish your dissertation. So once you have come up with a problem statement, you're going to need research questions. And in between the problem statement and the research questions, you're going to need a purpose. And quite simply, your purpose is to get to, to answer your problem statement. A number of universities I've seen say, okay, the purpose of this, and then you insert your methodology. This qualitative case study or this correlational study is to. And then you just basically cut and paste the words from your problem statement in here because now my purpose and my problem are aligned because they're saying the same thing. From there I come up with research questions. It's a quantitative study. You might have research questions about each variable and how they relate to the dependent variable. To what degree is there a significant relationship between age and IQ scores? What degree is there a significant relationship between sex and IQ scores? To what degree is there significant relationship? So we're looking at independent variables and our dependent variables. That becomes our research question. And our research questions allow us to get to the data that will then allow us to get to our problem. You typically have more research questions in a quantitative study based on the number of variables than you do in a qualitative study. Every once in a while there are schools that say your problem statement needs a citation. I've not seen too many problem statements with more than one citation. And it's based upon your university. But it's okay because your problem statement grows out of the literature. So you should have ample opportunities to find literature that you can cite in your problem statement. The tense of the problem statement. It's pretty much a statement. It's not a what will we find? It's not what did we find. It's the problem is we do not know what is the relationship between. It's not what was the relationship? Typically, unless you're doing some sort of historical analysis in your proposal, and this is almost always true. I recently found a school where it's not true. You write your proposal in the future Tense because I don't know what the results are. So when you're just writing your proposal, you don't say, this study will, this study may. And then once you have done your study, then you go back and put everything in the past tense. The location of the problem statement, whether it is in chapter one, which is typically the introduction, chapter two, which is your literature review, or even in chapter three, which is your methodology, more often than not, within your first chapter, telling the reader up front what you're going to be doing. I have seen a few schools that you talk about it, but you don't explicitly put it in until chapter two or even chapter three. So ultimately, you want to check with your institution and if they have a template, or worst case, if they don't, with your supervisor chair. Where do you want the problem statement? When I have seen problem statements rejected, it can come down to a number of reasons. One, it's not in alignment. That means my problem says one thing, my purpose goes in a different direction or uses different words, and my research questions may even go in another direction. So. So you haven't really aligned, narrowed everything down so that they all go in the same direction. That can be an issue. I've also seen some committees reject problems because they're too big, going to take too long. What is the impact of glacier movements on temperatures? Well, glaciers. You know, we say things move at a glacial pace, meaning it's slow. Your committee might be saying, I'll be dead by the time you've collected all this data. So let's do this in a reasonable time period. Those are the two biggest reasons. And I want to go back to talking about alignment, a really simple tool for checking your alignment. Taking your problem statement, the one sentence and either cutting it out with scissors or cutting and pasting. Put it on a page, whether it's an actual physical page or it's a screen in your computer. Below that, paste your problem statement. Below that, paste your research question and then read them. It can be easy to start using different words when they're separated by 2, 3, 4, 5 pages. But we're on the same page. You can start to see if they're aligned. And before I go further, I want to talk about this alignment and what I call the 8th grade English issue, if you remember in English somewhere, and I'm just picking on eighth grade where you had an English teacher who said, you know, Steve, this is okay, but, you know, let's make it interesting. Use different words to say this. Don't. You don't want to use different words. Because every time you use different words, it can bring up possibly different meanings. And then your committee can say, well, this means something different to me. And that means something different. You know, let's get it more in alignment. So ultimately be boring. Say it the same way every single time. Once you get alignment, then you don't have to worry. Your problem statement is the foundation. Spend some time making sure you have support for your problem statement. Everything from there moves forward better. It's like building a house. If your foundation isn't solid, the house is not going to get built or is going to fall. If your foundation is solid, if you've got a good problem statement, then you're going to be moving forward and be able to complete a dissertation. And if you're looking for support in your dissertation process, we have a free dissertation group which has live masterclasses. You can get questions answered, you get group support, and you know, it's always good because this is a really long and lonely journey and we're out here to help.