While starting research work, what is the main thing we should first focus on? Research problem or finding gap from the research papers via going through literature or looking in future recommendations in order to build the work?
You should study what interests you. Sometimes the objectives change once you start the research anyway
Well, you can only have a research problem if there is a gap in the existing theory. If there is no gap, your research problem has already been solved by others. I would make sure that there is a gap corresponding to your research problem because because if there isn't, nobody is going to be interested in your research.
What is the basic difference between problem statement and research gap?
Research gap is the research problem discovered after you'd conducted a rigorous literature review. Problem statement is a constructed sentence how you describe your research problem which is usually a subset of your research problem.
While starting research, do we first find gap or find research problem?
In my personal opinion - while embarking on a new research, first is to discover your research interest. Then perform rigorous literature review to identify the research gap & research boundary. After that, pen down your research gap as a research problem (typically in few paragraphs) that includes a problem statement.
Research gap is nothing but undiscovered research areas which any researcher may find out by conducting rigorous review of existing literature. A researcher may find many research gaps by this procedure.
A problem statement can be constructed based on research gap which researcher aims to answer and it clearly communicates objectives of research.
By conducting a comprehensive literature survey, scholar can find out few reserach gaps in the proposed topic of research. Then he/she may select few research gaps for problem formultion purpose. That is the traditional method of research.
Well, If you come across any problem and you posted your queries / questions which was scientifically answered with facts and figures by Scholars and Researchers. Then you got an answers. So no problem exist.
If no one provided appropriate answers with facts and figures. Then, its a problem. In order to solve this, you will be going to work to fix this. In short you will leading to solve the problem.
In Research community, if no solution exist after intensive review of existing literatures its called "research gap". Then you will be going to describe the situation with strong supporting "research gap" in few statements. That's called "problem statement" in other words you described the research problem.
Hope it helps.
A good practice would be something like this: While going through any research paper which you encounter during your course-work (or entire university life), you should keep close and critical eyes. There are obvious research gaps in every field, but you will only notice this when you read things critically. Once you find the research gap, then you try to fill in that gap with the help of the research question. Again this is a critical task, as you have to think multiple times that is your question enough to fill in the gap in a relevant manner. To ensure this, you can discuss it with some faculties and your peer group. However, you should avoid discussing this with people who you think can steal your idea. So, essentially the research gap is something that has not been done yet, and the research question is something that comes out of the gap. Research questions are different as the research gap can be a concept, but to answer an idea, you need to have a research question.
As a researcher, the first step is to do literature review that will help in understanding the work has been done by the previous researchers and they different aspects that have been explored by them in a particular discipline. A rigorous literature review will give the direction in which further research needs to be done (research gap). Once it is identified, once can formulate the research problem.
A problem statement can be defined as a specific, evidence-based, real-life issue faced by certain people or organizations that have significant negative implications to the involved parties.
I agree with you Premkumar Rajagopal. I am working towards solving the problem of high HIV infections in my region. I am set to study PrEP access and uptake.
In this YouTube video, you will be able to find the answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iB-XizP10s&t=1s
It seems that (research problem) is general, understood from all review of literature related to the topic under study, while (research gap)is deduced or arrived at from the previous studies done on the same field of the study to fill the one not being investigated. In other words, when there is a gap there is a problem.
The basic difference is that, research problem is derived from a research gap, while a research
gap comes from existing research. What you should do first is to review published research focusing on areas like related works, methodology and future works to identify gaps in existing research, then you use it to develop research problem.
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