Describes the desired situation and explains how things should be

This assignment is part 1 of 4 parts that I will be assigning to you. The other 3 parts include: review of literature for the action research project, develop the action research project proposal, select the population and sample that is the focus of the research project.

I thought that might help to know when working on the statement of problem.

Develop a statement of the problem to be studied.

1. The problem should be relevant to an area of business or management that can be studied through critical reading and research.

2. The problem statement should be specific and concise.

3. You should support the significance of your problem statement with evidence from the review of literature and/or specific examples.

Note from professor below:

The first assignment is a problem statement, and part of the characteristics of a problem statement is that it is concise and specific (Parker, 2012). It is not writing a paper as you are accustomed to writing in other classes. It is very specific and the rest of the research builds upon that statement. A problem statement generally includes three parts. These include the following:

• Describes the desired situation and explains how things should be.

• Describes the present conditions of the situation that prevents the ideal desired situation (described in the first bullet point). Explains how the present conditions fall short.

• Proposes ways to improve the situation and move towards the desired condition.

From this problem statement, that is how you create the research questions. We have to know what we are researching first and why it is a problem – then look at the questions we will attempt to answer. The literature review is based upon those research questions. Most problem statements are around 250 words and less than 500.

Reference:

Parker, J. (2012, Feb. 2). Writing an effective problem statement. Enfocus solutions. Retrieved from