Many university students or researchers
often ask me about the research gap or the statement of problem ,and
how to identify it. And this is super, super important, because if there is no problem, if you don't have
a research gap, then you basically don't have an aim
of your paper, and this means you don't really have
a thesis or a paper. So identifying the research gap or
the problem is vital. That's why in this video I want to
share with you my three top tips to very quickly identifying the research
gap, from which then you can have the aim of your study and
the rest of your thesis. So let's get started! If you're new here, my name is Marek
Kiczkowiak, and I run academicenglishnow.com,
where I help university students and researchers write better
theses and papers. f you're enjoying this video, then please hit
the like button and also consider subscribing
and hitting that bell button so you receive my future videos, and you can
continue improving your academic writing together
with me on this channel. So the first
tip that I want to share with you to help you
identify the research gap is to look for a lack of studies or for
insufficient studies. Now, it's very unlikely that no studies have been
conducted on something. It might be the case, but it's rather unlikely.
But what is likely is that there is not enough studies. In other words, there is an insufficient number
of studies on a particular topic or perhaps in a particular area. So in
here, when it comes to the lack of studies, you can consider
several gaps in knowledge, for example. It can be a geographical
gap (maybe no studies on this subject have been conducted in Latin
America or Southeast Asia, or a particular
region of your country). You could also think about the population
gap - maybe most people have studied men, and very few people have studied
this topic on women, or on children, or on high income
people, low income people, educated people, and so on.
So this is just to give you a couple of examples how you can look for
a lack or insufficient research in order to identify the research gap.
Tip number two would be to look for not a lack
of studies, but a lack of understanding or a lack of knowledge, or some kind of
controversy in your field. Now, it very often happens
that if several studies have already been conducted on a particular
issue, they might have had different results, and this means that we are not
sure yet how we should understand
this problem. There might also be conflicting theories, or there might be
different explanations for a particular phenomenon.
In other words, researchers disagree for example
as to the cause of something or the effect of something, or there are different ways of approaching a particular problem. This would be
another way in which you can identify the research gap
or the problem that will then lead you to the aim of your study.
Now before we finish, I just wanted to quickly encourage you to join my
five-day Instant Better Academic Writing challenge, which in just 10 minutes
for the next five days will really help you improve
your academic writing. And the link to this challenge is right
below this video. Now, the last and third tip that I want
to talk about is to look for problems in previous
studies, to look for limitations of previous research, to look for things
that other researchers have not done
100 percent well, things that could be improved about their studies; and this
can also give you your research gap or the
statement of problem. For example, think about it
like this: perhaps most researchers have used a
particular way of analyzing the data, but they
ignored other ways in which that data could be analyzed, which potentially could have given different
results. Now to sum up, the three ways in
which you can identify the research gap and state
the problem which you're going to answer with your research
aim. First of all, to look for a lack of research or insufficient
research. Number two: look for lack of understanding or a controversy
in your field. And number three is to look for
limitations of previous studies or problems with
previous studies. If possible, you should have more
than one problem, more than one research gap
that you're going to identify, usually, especially if you're
doing a PhD, it won't be enough just to have one, just to say
insufficient studies have been conducted and that's it, as a result I'm going to
do another study. That's not enough. If possible as well, have different
types of research gaps, so maybe have one about insufficient studies and another one maybe about a lack of understanding or a
problem with previous studies. This will help make
the reason for your study, this problem or research gap,
much more robust and stronger, and as a result, the aim of your study will be much more
logical as well. If you enjoyed this video, then please consider
subscribing to this channel and hit that bell button so you don't miss
any of my future videos. And don't forget to join the 5 day academic
writing challenge: the link is right below this video.
