Research Problems

[WLOs: 2, 3] [CLO: 3]

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read the following chapters from your textbook, and refer to the Research Proposal Project final project assignment as a reference in Week 6 for what you will be compiling for this project to gain an understanding of what research problem might be most appropriate.

• Chapter 1: The Nature and Tools of Research
• Chapter 2: The Problem: The Heart of the Research Process
• Chapter 3: Review of the Related Literature
• Chapter 4: Planning Your Research Project

In addition, watch Creating a Research Question (Links to an external site.) and What Is research? (Links to an external site.)

Select a human/social service organization, which can be where you are currently employed, or where you would have an interest in gaining future employment. You will use this organization and research problem as the basis of your final Research Proposal Project.

Chapters 1 to 4 of the Leedy and Ormrod text will help guide you as decide what the problem is that you would like to propose to evaluate, what literature is going to be most appropriate for this proposal, and how to plan with the proposal. The chapters will guide you on how to construct and write the research proposal. It is important to select your research problem carefully. The following considerations should be addressed in the assignment:

• How do you know when you have a legitimate research problem?
• How would you delineate the subparts of the social problem for your research project?
• How did you make your determinations and what were the details of the determination process?
• How would you plan for such a research process?
• How do your tentative research question(s) apply to your final project?

Your instructor will provide feedback on the research problem and the proposed research question which will serve as “approval” to proceed with the project as a comment along with your grade in the gradebook. You may find Narrowing a Topic and Developing a Research Question (Links to an external site.) from the Writing Center to be useful in this assignment.

The Research Problems learning activity will be submitted to a Canvas dropbox. The paper must be two to three double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.) . The paper must utilize Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) and two scholarly sources (see Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) for assistance). The scholarly sources need to be formatted in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide, and the separate references page should be formatted according to the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource.