Spotlight on Skills: Finding a Research Problem Articulating a research-worthy problem is difficult before you have completed a thorough review of existing literature in your area of study. Hence, doctoral students may have difficulty expressing an appropriate topic and area of inquiry before they have a solid understanding of what has already been written about a given topic. Such understanding comes from reading many articles and identifying patterns, issues, and gaps in the body of knowledge. Not all problems are research-worthy. A proper research problem for a paper or dissertation meets all these criteria:
* It is a real-life problem experienced by a particular group of people or organizations;
* Its existence and magnitude are well documented by recent and credible sources, preferably statistics and research findings from peer- reviewed literature
* It is significant in the sense that it reflects a need or importance of the study.
