RESEARCH TOPIC

AREA IDENTIFICATION
MARIA LUZ C. MURILLO
Research Teacher
Group Activity (at least 5 members): Given a
news item identify the following
■ Identified Topic or Trend
■ Identified Focus of the Study (affected areas by the
trend)
Sources of Topics for Research
■ Researcher’s observations, interests, and
experiences
■ Deduction from theories
■ Related literature
■ Clarification of contradictory findings
(Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen & Walker, 2014;Mcmillan & Schumacher, 2010 as cited by Uy,
Cabautan et al.)
Guidelines in the Selection of Research
Topic
■ Acceptability refers to how researchers view
the topic in relation to the field of study.
■ Applicability refers to the usefulness of the
research output to a wider group of people and
that it has implications to theory, research and
practice.
Research Problem Defined
■ A research problem is an area affected by the
identified topic or trend in the field that you would
like to address, investigate, or study , whether
historically, descriptively or experimentally (de
Guzman, 2015 as cited by Uy, Cabatuan et al.)
■ It is the focus or reason for engaging in your
research. It is a topic, a phenomenon, or a
challenge that you are interested in and with
which you are at least familiar.
■ Research problems are issues, controversies or
concerns studied by researchers (Creswell, 2005).
These problems exists in our surroundings.

■ Examples:
- The increasing cost of gasoline and electricity
- The daily magnitude of collected garbage
- The amount of carbon dioxide and diesel emit
■ In order to determine the research problem, the following
questions may be asked: -What was the issue , problem or
controversy that I would like to address concerning the situation
or topic of interest?
- What do I already know about the topic of interest?
- What else do I need to know about the topic of interest?
- What studies were already done on the topic of interest?
- What were the findings of the previous studies done in the
topic?
- Were the findings of previous researches similar or
diverse?
Components of the Research Problem
Write-up Trends
Context

Issues

Research
Rationale
Problem

Knowledge

Signific
ance
Practice