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Explain the criteria to be considered while selecting a research problem.

Selection of a research problem is a big job in itself, although, the actual research is more painstaking (especially if it is for a dissertation). There are a few criteria one can use to select the research problem. 


  • Passion: How passionate you are about a research topic is one of the top criteria for selection of a research problem, especially for a long-duration project. Researchers face many issues during the tenure of the research project and it is the passion for the particular research topic or sub-area that keeps them going. So you may want to think about what excites you among the large number of research problems or areas.

  • Knowledge gap: A successful research attempts to fill the knowledge gap. That is, it is aimed at adding to the knowledge of the scientific community and public (in general). A research problem may excite you, but if it has already been worked upon by a number of researchers and all the questions have been (more or less) answered, very little remains to be worked on. That is where literature review may help you. For any research area of interest, go through some books, reports and journal articles and try to figure out if a sufficient enough knowledge gap exists.

  • Availability of resources: It may be easier to figure out a research problem, but difficult to see it through. One always have to compare the resources required and resources available for a given research problem. If your problem requires laboratory work, ensure that the required equipment is available or could be arranged. Similarly, if field work is needed, have a preliminary idea of your sample group and its availability. 

  • Scope of the problem: We all want to answer so many questions as researchers, however we only have a given amount of time to do so. Thus, keeping the scope of the problem in mind is really important. While selecting a research problem, have some idea of how long will it take to answer the inherent questions and then modify your research problem according to the time allocated (by your supervisor or instructor). 

Hope this helps.

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