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Developing Social Problems into Research Problems for Graduate Study

Developing Social Problems into Research Problems for Graduate Study Program Transcript

TEACHER: Welcome to tonight's webinar, "Developing Social Problems into Research Problems." I'm eager to talk about social problems, research problems, and the differences between them. We'll talk a bit about organizing these problems in your course papers, CAMs, or at the Capstone level in your proposals, and I'll go over the session objectives in just a moment.

You might want to have a paper and pen nearby or maybe pull up another blank Word document. You could go back and forth between the slides in your Word document if you are technologically savvy, but you could at least take notes because I'll also be mentioning resources and of course dig into the slides verbally beyond simply what's written here on them.

And so, our session objectives tonight. We're going to talk about, as I mentioned, the difference between social problems and research problems. This difference applies to you as a graduate student at Walden regardless of your program-- master's level, EdD, DBA, PhD-- whatever degree level you're pursuing, these differences will apply to you. We'll recognize how research problems connect to work in your program, how those research problems are central to your course papers, your cams, or your Capstone proposals.

And finally we'll have a little practice at the end. I have a couple of examples. I'll show you a model you can use in your notes behind the scenes informally as you're developing your research problems, and I'll show you a couple of examples of how to use that model at the end before we stop for Q&A.

All right, so to begin, let's talk about differences between these problems. You've come to Walden for many, many reasons, but something that we stress in the mission-- in our mission here at the University is social change. And so, likely, you have identified a social problem that you've seen around you and you want to work to alleviate it or to correct it, to resolve it.

Yet a social problem on its own is not enough on which to build a course paper, a CAM, or a Capstone project. You need to transfer or transform that social problem into an academic problem into a research problem. So here are some differences between them. A social problem-- it's an undesirable situation in your community. Low literacy rates, the achievement gap, failure of small businesses in downtown urban areas, shortages of math teachers, of nurses' health epidemics, obesity.

These are social problems. They are undesirable situations that you see around you. They don't necessarily require much research however to resolve depending

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on what that social problem is, and there is an example here on the slide. So let's say we've suffered a significant drought across the country here this summer.

So let's say the county's water supply is low. That is a social problem. That's a problem that's affecting the community. One solution could be to enforce a water use ban to replenish its supply. So residents being good citizens choose not to water their lawns or they conserve water in their home so that there can be more water for everyone. And so, that is a social problem, a practical problem that has a practical solution. Not a lot of research required there to figure out that resolution.

However, a research problem is a topic that you study to understand in more detail, and that study-- your analysis-- can be options for resolutions. Such as, research problem-- the teacher turnover rate in a local school district is high. Novice teachers are leaving at a high rate. The solution could be to analyze and resolve these teachers' reasons for leaving.

Well, how do you know the reasons why teachers are leaving? Well, you'd likely would interview them or ask them to complete a survey. Find out their perceptions of what was going on on the job that led to their wanting to leave that job.

And so you would need to study, oh, why teachers have left other positions in other school districts, particularly in the novice years. What it is about the teaching position that might not be appealing for a variety of reasons. Pay perhaps is dependent upon property taxes and some people would rather teach in a more economically sound area than others. There's all kinds of research involved there. So this is sort of an overall difference between social and research problems.

So now how does that difference affect what you're doing at the course level or at the proposal level in your graduate work here at Walden? Well, when writing course papers or CAMs, and I'm particularly thinking of course papers here, the main point is your thesis. Your research of that main point supports your thesis. So your research problem is the thesis of your paper.

For example, Rokko's 2011 theory of participatory leadership is particularly appropriate to nurse educators working within the emergency medicine field where students benefit most from collegial and kinesthetic learning. So what I'm going to be looking for, if this is the thesis of your paper, is research to support this claim. And so I expect the paragraphs throughout the body section for the next 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or however many pages you have are going to support this research issue.

Capstone proposals, and I think of CAMs along in this area as well. CAMs sort of straddles the spectrum between course papers and Capstone proposals because

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they are longer documents. They're not short like course papers, but they are not chapters and chapters long like a Capstone. And so I would say the folks working on CAMs, you would work with your faculty mentor to blend the research problem into the main thesis, the main point of writing your CAM.

At the Capstone proposal level, your main point is your research problem. Your research will contribute to your discipline. You're doing all kinds of extended research on this issue so that you can conduct a study to generate your own original data and contribute that data to the field by writing your Capstone project. And this holds well-- this holds as well at the thesis level.

So here's an example. This qualitative study was designed to explore small business owners' perceptions of how to increase their online sales while construction adversely affects sales on site. So it sounds like there was a problem here in the local community. Because of a construction project, certain business owners experienced a decrease in on-site sales.

One potential way to resolve this issue is to boost online sales, but that will require research. What does it take to boost online sales? How have other small entrepreneurs done that? How have other entrepreneurs addressed construction issues, which happen in all cities and towns in good weather. There are plenty of different ways that you could jump into this issue and explore this research problem.

So thinking about connecting a research problem to your paper, and this is one way to go about organizing your ideas. The social problem is your background. Tell me about that problem. Construction in the city is necessary to widen the roads because of growth in population over the last 40 years. However, that construction has particularly affected small business owners, or there would be an example about nursing students.

There are a variety of learning styles and not all students learn in the same way. In particular, in the field of nursing and emergency management nursing. Even more particularly, here are learning styles that according to one person's-- one researcher's theory, these learning styles could be especially productive for students studying emergency nursing. And so you have this background social problem that you funnel down into a thesis in a paper into a research problem. And then the body of the paper is your support and your analysis coming from the literature to support your claim, and finally you wrap up in the conclusion.

Likewise, if you're connecting your research problem in your proposal, then you have the background describing whatever the social problem is, but you explain how it becomes a research problem. You explain where this social problem has been addressed in the literature. And this is the case, regardless of writing course paper, CAMs, or proposals.

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Where in the literature has this issue been addressed before by other researchers? If you have an issue that has not been addressed by other researchers, then in large part you do not have a research problem on your hands. You have a social problem.

Let's take that county water supply example. The county's water supply is low. That's a social problem, but I'm going to need a lot more specific information to transform it into a research problem.

Why is it low? Is it low because people in a certain part of the city or county are using it more than others? Does that mean that there's disproportionate availability of water? Is it based on socioeconomic status?

There are all kinds of issues if you fit into that social problem, all kinds of potential research avenues to explore. But by itself, simply saying the county water supply is low is strictly a social problem. You need a lot more context to get into that research problem, and that context comes from the literature.

That's where this problem becomes academic-- the research. And in the case of the proposal, you move from discussing the social problems to the research problems, and that in the proposal leads you to your research questions that then explain why you've chosen this particular method, qualitative or quantitative or mixed. And then your method also dictates how you collect and analyze data. You can see then that research problem is smack in the middle-- it is central to your course paper, to your CAM, or to your proposal at the Capstone level.

So I was just mentioning that you want to emphasize reading the literature, looking for your topic in the literature. Well, why? What can you find out when you turn to the literature to dig into a social problem?

Well, you can learn the debates about that topic. What are the different sides of the issue? And those sides will show you plenty of footholds, nooks, and crannies that you can dig into to transform this into a research problem.

Beyond the debates, you can learn the history of a topic. What were some of its changes over time, major movements or breakthroughs in this topic? What were some major studies or laws that were passed about it?

If you're looking at education, of course, No Child Left Behind is a significant issue. Some people would call it a breakthrough, some people wouldn't. And there's all kinds of research on the positive and negative effects, the advantages and disadvantages of the No Child Left Behind accountability requirements.

If you're studying the environment, such as water, if you're studying the environment and you look at perhaps the Environmental Protection Agency's laws over time. How have other counties dealt with water equity issues? Perhaps

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it's among states. I know-- well, not just I know, but in the Western states, desert, there's less water to be had, and so it is pumped in from other places. Well, who gets that water? What are the politics, what are the research issues behind that?

So you can learn the history of a problem. You can also learn a problem's context, aspects of this issue that other researchers have already studied. Maybe there has been a study of nursing shortages in small, rural areas. Perhaps shortages of health professionals in rural areas because people maybe want to work where there is a greater population in larger suburbs or in cities.

What have other researchers done to study that problem? Maybe some folks have-- some researchers have studied it from a socioeconomic angle. Maybe some researchers have studied it from a gender angle. What gaps are there-- and here I'm jumping to the next point-- in the work that other researchers have done?

You'll identify these gaps mainly for your proposal, for your thesis or dissertation or doc study. But it might well be that you encounter a course assignment in which your faculty asks you to identify a problem-- a research problem and present different sides of it, as well as sides that have not yet been explored. And so then you can look for those gaps amid the work that other researchers have already done. And so, the literature is very important in envisioning your social problem as a research problem.

OK, we ended that last slide on gaps. And so research problems come out of these gaps, and here I have focused in particular on the Capstone level because you might have an assignment at the course level that asks you to look for these gaps. But certainly by the time you are conducting your Capstone work, if you are pursuing the PhD or the DBA or EdD, then you're looking for those gaps eagerly.

The dissertation requires a gap in the literature, and the example here, for instance, researchers have explored high turnover rates among novice teachers but not among mid-career teachers. That's significant, yeah. So we know perhaps why younger teachers are leaving the profession. Maybe they're new to it and they've decided that they don't feel committed to it and they want and go somewhere else, but how about mid-career teachers who have been doing this for 10 or 15 years.

Why do they decide I no longer want to teach, or I no longer want to teach here? Maybe some people are leaving for personal reasons-- moving elsewhere so a spouse can have a job in another state. But maybe people are leaving for reasons that have to do with the school district that the school district could address. And at the doctoral study level, you're looking for a gap in practice. Not in the literature so much, but in business practice or in educational practice in classrooms, or in schools.

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For example, weak mentoring programs in the school or workplace could be contributing to high turnover rates. So there are high turnover rates at a given factory or a given organization or school. One reason why that could be the case is because there are zero mentoring programs or weak mentoring programs in practice at this workplace or at the school.

So I'm going to research that mentoring program. I'm going to research other, more successful mentoring programs, and think about ways that I can apply that success that those programs in this particular workplace. I'm going to fill that gap in practice.

OK, this matrix is to help you think about, again, ways to transform social problems to research problems. You have come to Walden likely motivated to apply social change to a problem you have perceived around you. It's a big part of the mission here. And so this matrix explains how to go about doing that.

If you stop and start in the upper-left corner, you identify a social problem in your community. You study it as a research problem to identify solutions you see across that first arrow to the second box on the upper right. So you study your social problem as a research problem to identify solutions that then you apply in that bottom box in the triangle. Apply those solutions to resolve the problem in the community.

It's a very specific matrix. You're not going to solve world hunger and you are not going to solve the achievement gap. You might not even solve-- your research, your analysis might not even close the achievement gap at one school. But maybe you'll do something to increase literacy rates or to improve teacher turnover rates, teacher retention rates.

Maybe you'll do something even in a small way to make small change in your local community by resolving some aspect of that social problem, and that small change is really big. That is a significant change for lack of a better word that's a significant event if everybody makes a small change. There's a lot of change, and so don't feel either overwhelmed that you have to change the world or that there's such a huge problem that you can't dig into it.

You just need to take that significant, big social problem and whittle it down. Narrow it down to a specific research problem to find ways to solve it and then applying those solutions. And you see this in the CAM, right? Folks writing the CAM, you have the breadth section, the depth section, and the application. So in the breadth, you're talking about all of those different theorists who have worked in this area and given topic generally. That's breadth. The depth, you're really digging in on the literature.

You're reading the literature to see how other researchers have addressed this issue over time so that you can arrive at solutions. Potential solutions that then

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you can apply and try to bring about social change in that one small way, and you do that for every CAM, you do that for your Capstone, and those small changes add up among the whole student body to make a great difference.

Thinking about-- this is our last slide before we move into practice. Thinking about the problem statement from the proposal perspective, I've talked earlier about the fact that your research problem is going to dictate your research questions and it's also going to dictate the method you choose by which to study this issue. So here is a breakdown of quantitative studies versus qualitative studies in terms of your problem.

If you are conducting a quantitative study, your problem needs to include at least two variables. Generally the demographic variables, but there can be others. You might look at age, socioeconomic status, gender. You might have a topic where you are analyzing data according to ethnicity or student GPA, height, number of years on the job, degree attained. There are all kinds of different demographic data you might use, and you want to have at least two of these variables in order to look for a relationship between them, and that's what your problem statement would discuss.

Your problem statement describes conjectured relationship between these variables. And so you would have a research question with the hypothesis-- the null hypothesis and your alternative hypothesis. And these are issues that your faculty mentor, that your faculty committee chair can work with you on.

You might well be in courses where you were expected to write mock research questions, develop a mock problem statement. To practice using this language and to practice getting comfortable with what quantitative means, with what qualitative means. While hypotheses will go with quantitative studies.

Conversely, a qualitative study will have a problem that includes an issue or a phenomenon that you need to understand in more detail. So you're not really looking at demographics and comparing and contrasting or developing relationships between them. You're looking at an issue and you want to study perceptions.

In this case, you might be studying-- as I used the example earlier-- about novice teachers leaving the job, leaving the profession. You might interview those teachers to find out their perceptions of the work place, of the job. Why it is that they decided to leave. That's not something you're going to know simply by reading another article. You're not going to know why those particular teachers left the profession.

You are going to know if you talk to them about it. It's a phenomenon, high teacher turnover rate. So go figure out-- go talk to them to figure out and collect data about why they left. In this case, you will not have hypotheses. And again,

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your faculty can help you through these issues depending on which method you're using.

Now before we shift over to the practice slide, there are a few of those and then we wrap up the session. I'm going to go over to the Q&A box to see if there might be any questions that I could answer here at this point since we have a nice clean way of breaking here. Let's see.

It looks like there was a question about demographics. I think that's what this question was. Gender differences plus age, the idea of comparing a couple different variables there. Yes, the idea would be that you have at least a couple of demographic variables that you're conjuring or conjecturing about a relationship between them.

Good. Great. Thanks for the question. Oh, and will I talk about mixed methods? Oh, I absolutely will.

Mixed method is a combination of qualitative and quantitative. It's a little bit of qual, it's a little bit of quant. One of them will be more dominant in your study, and because a mixed methods study has qualitative and quantitative aspects, your research questions need to be-- you need to identify these are the quantitative research questions for my mixed method study. These are the qualitative research questions.

You might have one or two, two or three, and they break down according to qual and quant. And for the quantitative research questions, you do indeed need hypotheses. And I would say beyond that general information, I would talk with your faculty member about how to go about conducting a mixed method study. I know that I hear faculty say that mixed methods can take a longer time because you are collecting both quantitative data that then you analyze and interpret, but you're also collecting qualitative data that then you analyze and interpret.

So you're doing a little bit of both methods. And so that can require-- it does require you to wear a couple hats. So I hope that was helpful. I'd say for questions beyond that for qualitative, quantitative mixed methods, go to the Center for Research Qualities website, and I have information on that on the resource slide at the end of the presentation.

Let's see, there's a question about demographic variables, socioeconomic status, and level of self-determination. Sure. And you just want to make clear about how you're going to measure the level of self-determination. What instrument are you using to measure that? And also, what instrument are you using or perhaps what source are you using to determine socioeconomic status? And that might be census data or what have you.

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Let's see. How can I really develop a problem statement for qualitative studies? Well, a qualitative-- you could use-- I would recommend looking into perceptions. Your qualitative study is going to have a problem that is an issue, it's a phenomenon. It's something that's happening, such as high teacher turnover rate.

It's a problem such as-- let's take, for instance, the business folks who are losing money on the job on-site because there is a construction issue, and then the foot traffic to their store has declined. And so their profits have declined, and so then what do you do? That's a phenomenon that you can approach from a qualitative angle by saying these retailers want to improve their online sales, but none of them currently has a web presence.

And so what are their perceptions of what they need to do to go about increasing their sales online, or what resources do they perceive that they need in order to increase their sales online? Often when you're conducting a qualitative study, your data collection will come from either a survey with open-ended questions, not just yes/no or multiple choice, but actually an essay box that they get to type in their answers, or interviews because you're asking for folks' perceptions.

And again, beyond that qualitative studies, I'd say go-- for any of these methods, I'd say go to the Center for Research Support to learn more about the different kinds of studies you can-- sorry, the different kinds of study that you can conduct. And I misspoke just now, it's called the Center for Research Quality. That office has just changed its name last week, and I'll have that website when we go to our resource slide.

OK, a couple more questions and then we'll go back to our examples of how to use this model to transfer your social problems into research problems. OK, if a study is conducting-- sorry, if a student is conducting a dissertation, which study would be best? Well, this is one of my favorite questions I must say because the answer is, it depends.

And I know that's the worst answer. Everybody-- nobody likes that answer, but it really does depend. There is no best method without knowing what your problem is. What question do you have that you want answered? When you know what that problem is, then you can decide, OK, do I need to go get archive data of student's GPA over time-- let's say an after school program was instituted two years ago and you want to determine its effectiveness?

Maybe you'll look at student GPA for the years before that program was put into place and now these two years since that program has been put into place. Crunch the numbers. Are the GPAs higher after the program is put into place? Then you can say at least in some ways this program could have been effective as long as you're controlling for lots of other variables, like maybe these students didn't even go to the after-school program.

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Maybe they hired tutors and got tutoring at home. You want to make sure that you control for any variables in there. But if you want to do a numbers crunching study, if your question requires you to do that, then you would choose a quantitative method. Conversely, if your question requires you to interview teachers to find out why they left the job, then you're conducting a qualitative study.

So everything really does come out of this research problem. You can have a topic and study it from a qualitative angle or a quantitative angle or a mixed methods angle. It's really up to you on what you want to learn about it, and that's where you would work with your faculty to determine that.

OK, let's see. How do you link social problems to economic impact in the community, such as poor technical education's impact on the cost of doing business and ability to achieve business success? Well, that's a great question, and in fact it's great because it's so detailed. Because your question is so detailed, I feel bad I can't answer it in that kind of detail.

My answer to you would be to talk to your faculty about this. Either your faculty mentor if you're working on a CAM or your chair if you have a committee put together for the Capstone, or your instructor if you're in a class. Because you're getting into great content level detail here, which is fantastic. And so then your faculty are the content experts.

My Ph.D. is in English, and so I feel like I know that APA manual back and front. And I feel like a really close reader in a broad way, an educated reader in a broad way, and you're getting into such detail that I think your faculty can best support you on this. But off the top of my head in a general way, what I think you're going to want to do when I see you write poor technical education, I'm going to want to know what poor means.

How do you know that the level of technical education is low? What instrument are you using to measure that? Is it just your opinion? Is it GPA upon student graduation from technical colleges? How are you determining or defining that part of your problem?

And then how is having an impact on the cost of doing business? That's one issue. Or how it's having an impact on the ability to achieve business success-- that's another issue. So it sounds like you might have a couple of research problems combined into one here. You really want to filter, filter, narrow down, and tease out these threads to decide which one you want to learn more about.

Do you want to learn more about the impact on cost of doing business or do you want to learn about the impact of the ability to achieve business success? And if you want to go in that direction, my question is what do you mean by business success? Do you mean longevity? This business has been in place for 20 years.

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Do you mean profit? I've never been in the red. Or do you mean profits exceeding a certain level? I've made more than $100,000 a year, every year with my business or a million dollars or whatever threshold you're talking about. So you're off to a great start here, but your faculty can really help you narrow down and tease apart those threads.

OK, and I see one more question, then I'll shift to the examples. How short is too short for a qualitative study? I'm afraid I'm not collecting enough data and my analysis is not long enough. That's a good question, and again, depends.

It depends on how many people you're interviewing. You will need to explain in the method section. Justify your sample if you're conducting a qualitative study and you have interviewed five people. You explain how it is that you arrived at five as a number that is reliable and valid to produce data. And your faculty can help you with reliability and validity in terms of determining your sample size and what to do with the data, how to collect those data, and how to analyze.

Wow, everybody has fantastic questions. That was great. Thank you very much. I'm going to shift us back to the slides.

Keep those questions coming. I'll check the box at the end of the session, and we will move on to the slide-- move on to the examples. Sorry, here we go.

OK, so I mentioned that we would look at a model. This is a model that comes from a book called The Craft of Research, and you see the source at the bottom of the slide. I know you have a lot of books to read, but if you get your hands on this one and even skim it, it gets into great detail about why research is important and some steps you might use to go about looking into research problems versus what they call practical problems. They distinguish between practical problems and research problems in this book. In our presentation this evening and here at Walden, we distinguish between social problems and research problems.

OK, and so I'm just noticing-- I want to make sure that everybody can hear me. Good. And so I would recommend taking a look at this book if you have the time.

However, if you don't have the time, here is the matrix for you-- this research problem practice model. Your topic-- I am studying blank. Fill in the blank and then continue the sentence.

Dig into the question because I want to find out blank. What happens when, why such and such is, how this issue came to be. I am studying blank because I want to find out blank in order to help my reader understand blank. This is the significance of your topic.

This model is an informal one and it is meant for you to use behind the scenes as you are conducting your literature review or as you're looking into sources for

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your course paper, jotting down notes on your computer, or in a notebook. This is not meant for you to use this language in your actual paper or in your actual CAM or proposal. You don't want to have a paragraph in your proposal that says I am studying blank because I want to find out blank in order to help my reader understand blank. This is for purely note purposes only, but it helps you put words on the page.

And then you can draft them and expand them, and move from there into greater research and really focus your research. And pull out some key support for your course papers and CAMs, key support for the look of your proposal. So let's see this model in action.

OK, here is a sample of how you might use this model in your notes behind the scenes while you're developing ideas for a paper, or developing ideas for a Capstone project. I am studying the role of nurses in hospitals because I want to find out why students who study nursing at this college move to their city rather than pursue jobs here in order to help the reader understand the advantages of developing strong relationships between hospitals and college nursing programs.

Now this paragraph is a great way to start. It helps the writer articulate exactly what that research problem is at the moment. Now if I were reading this and I have a faculty member with a student writing a paper about this topic or writing a CAM or proposal about it, I would say, well, which nurses do you want to study?

Do you mean pediatric nurses? Do you mean surgical nurses? Do you mean nurses who work in hospice?

The role of nurses in hospitals-- well, which hospitals? Do you mean county hospitals? Do you mean private hospitals? I'd be looking for more detail. Large, urban hospitals? Small community, regional hospitals? Because I want to find out why students who study nursing at this college moved to other cities rather than pursue jobs here.

Of course, I'd be looking for evidence of this. What are some statistics that show that past nursing alums from that college have gone on to other places? Why would people stay in this city? Are these students from here that they moved to this city from other places in order to study nursing and then they left again? Maybe then it's not so strange that they leave.

Or maybe is the city you're in economically depressed? I have a lot of blanks here I need to fill in. This paragraph-- this one sentence, rather, gives you a great starting point, and you can see how you can narrow down once you figure out more information, you just alter-- you edit the sentence. I am studying the role of pediatric nurses in county hospitals because I want to find out why students who study pediatric nursing at this college choose not to be employed at both the

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county hospital in our city even though there is a nursing shortage there of pediatric nurses.

Why don't these students want to go there? You can get into more and more detail to understand the advantages of developing strong relationships between hospitals and college nursing programs. And then I'd wonder, well, what are some of those potential advantages? Have you studied other hospitals and college nursing partnerships and ways that they are advantageous and disadvantageous?

So again, it's a great way for you-- it's a great study tool for you to use behind the scenes to really narrow down your ideas and to share these ideas with your faculty. E-mail, present to your faculty in a draft here's what I'm thinking, and your faculty might well have some of the same questions I do about being more specific in certain places.

Well, let's see another example. I am studying leadership styles because I want to find out how leadership actions of project managers who display introvert characteristics differ from those who display extrovert characteristics in order to help my reader understand the importance of diverse ways of interacting among leaders and employees in the workplace. Fabulous first draft of notes for behind the scenes work, trying to figure out how to narrow down your social issue into a research issue.

So my question will be-- oh, I have lots of questions. What do you mean by leadership actions? I want to find out how leadership actions of project managers. I'm not sure what a leadership action is, so you'd want to be more specific.

Do you mean in hiring? Do you mean in conducting meetings? Do you mean actually managing a project on a specific team? How do you define introvert characteristics versus extrovert characteristics? Chances are there's some sort of scale or survey that folks are going to complete so that you can determine who displays introvert or extrovert characteristics to collect data.

Or else are you going to define certain characteristics based simply on observation? That can be kind of hard because then you might be making assumptions based on how someone acts whether they're introverted or extroverted. And you would need to explain why your opinion of how they're acting is reliable and is based in the literature.

And then we get down to the bottom there, the importance of diverse ways of interacting among leaders and employees in the workplace. Which industry are we talking about? Are you talking about manufacturing? Are you talking about retail? Are you talking about technology?

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Is it a large firm with 70,000 employees? Is it a small firm, mom and pop down the road? A local paper manufacturing plant or something like that? I'd have a lot of details, but you can always revise this sentence to narrow, narrow, narrow.

Get your topic specified. Your question in there specified. Why you want-- what do you want to learn about? Why do you want to learn about it? How do you want to learn about it, and how is it significant?

Well, we still have a few minutes for questions. Let's see. Oh, great there is-- and I've seen plenty of compliments that people appreciate the webinar and I'm so glad that you're finding ways already to think about your own social problems that brought you to Walden, and shift them into the context of research problems. And anybody here-- any of the faculty here can help you do that.

And certainly we have so many support systems in place-- the Center for Research Quality, the library. I emphasized that literature is very important in that transformation of social problem to research problem. Well, that happens by reading the literature, and the library has tons of great webinars about how to dig into the literate in all the various topics-- business site, health, education, any topic that you could study at Walden.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, thanks everybody for your attention. Have a great night and happy researching. Buh-bye.

Developing Social Problems into Research Problems for Graduate Study Content Attribution

Walden University Writing Center. (2013). Developing Social Problems into Research Problems for Graduate Study [VideoTranscript]. Retrieved from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/researchcenter/resources/planning#s-lg-box- 2479380

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