Formulation of a research problem means to state the problem in a way that is researchable. It means to shape the research topic in a manner that it becomes ready for scientific investigation. A research problem is simply the research topic. A researcher needs to refine the topic and clearly state what is intended to be explored about the topic. This is called formulation of the research problem which involves narrowing down a broader research area into a specific research topic and devising the objectives. Once the research problem is formulated, the topic becomes ready for undergoing a scientific inquiry – the research.

The formulation of a research problem consists of the following steps:

1. Identify a broad research area of your interests:
2. Dissect the broad area into sub-areas:
3. Select one of the sub-areas
4. Raise research questions
5. Formulate the objectives

A researcher always starts with identifying a broad research area depending on his interest, knowledge, and expertise. It is generally a large area that a researcher wants to investigate. For instance, a researcher in social science may select research areas such as poverty reduction, overpopulation, conflict resolution, crime control, unemployment, political instability, economic fluctuations, human rights, the justice system, familial issues, cultural practices, social and religious fragmentations, domestic violence and so on. These are broad research areas that cannot be treated straight as the research topic. Each of these broad areas has many sub-areas and all of those sub-areas cannot be covered in a single research study. However, each of the sub-areas of the larger area can be treated as a research topic.  

Once a broad research area is selected, it is narrowed down into a specific topic that is researchable and manageable for the researcher. This involves dissecting the broad area into sub-areas and finding one suitable sub-area for the research. For instance, a researcher selects a broad area ‘Domestic Violence’. This broad area can be split into the following sub-areas:

• Profile of families in which DV occurs
• Profile of victims of DV
• Profile of perpetrators
• Causes of DV
• Types of DV
• Impacts of DV on family
• Impacts of DV on  children
• Services available to the victims of DV
• Effectiveness of the services provided to the victims of DV
• The extent of DV in a community

As noted earlier, it is not feasible for a researcher to study all the sub-areas due to limited resources such as time and monetary resources. Similarly, one research study should specifically address one particular area so that it can be studied in its entirety. If a very broad area is selected, one research study may not do the justice in exploring its every aspect. This is because the boundaries of a large area are never easy to be identified in its entirety, and the researcher may unnecessarily pay more attention to some aspects while leaving other aspects of the research area.

Hence, the researcher should select one of the sub-areas of the broad area for their research. It makes the research feasible and manageable for the researcher. The choice of the sub-area depends on the interest, knowledge, research expertise of the researcher as well as the general significance of the sub-areas.  

After selecting a specific sub-area, the researcher has to think about what needs to be explored about this sub-area. In other words, the researcher has to raise questions related to the chosen sub-area which need to be answered through the research. Many research questions can be raised by the researcher, however, only the most important and relevant questions should be selected. The total number of questions (to be selected) depends on the nature of the topic which would also ultimately determine the overall length (or size) of the research thesis.

Let us suppose the researcher selects one sub-area (from the above list of sub-areas) that is ‘Causes of Domestic Violence’. The following questions may be raised about this area.

1. How does illiteracy influence DV?
2. Is poverty responsible for DV?
3. How do long-held traditions lead to DV?
4. What are the socio-cultural causes of DV?

Similarly, for the sub-area “Impacts of Domestic Violence on Children”, the following questions can be raised.

1. What is the impact of DV on the emotional development of a child?
2. How DV affects the child’s academic performance?
3. What are the effects of DV on a child's physical health?
4. How DV influences the social behavior of children?

Then, the researcher formulates the objectives of the research which are intended to be explored. These objectives basically stem from the research questions. The difference between research questions and objectives is the way they are written. Research questions are interrogative sentences. On the other hand, objectives are action or aim-oriented statements consisting of words such as to explore, to investigate, to examine, to find out and so on. Therefore, a simple way to write the objectives is to transform research questions into action-oriented statements.

For instance, the research questions for “Causes of Domestic Violence” can be transformed into the following objectives.

• To examine the influence of illiteracy on DV
• To explore the impact of poverty on DV
• To know long-held traditions leading to DV
• To investigate the socio-cultural causes of DV

As another example, the research questions for “Impacts of Domestic Violence on Children” can be transformed into the following objectives.

• To understand the impact of DV on the emotional development of a child.
• To examine the influence of DV on the child’s academic performance.
• To know various effects of DV on a child’s physical health.
• To explore the impact of DV on the child’s social behavior.

In research reports or theses, the research questions and the objectives are presented either as two separate sections or one combined section with a heading ‘the research aims and questions’. When they are written as two separate sections, differences are sometimes seen in the writing format of the question and objectives such that the objectives are not the exact transformed version of the questions. There are reasons for it.

First, the above discussion discusses only the formulation of the research problem which is the first step of the research. Here, the primary aim is not to draft questions and objectives to be included in the final thesis. These questions and objectives can be included in the final thesis, however, as far as research problem formulation is concerned, the primary aim of devising these questions is to view the selected topic in terms of its boundaries as set by devising these questions and objectives. This is primarily aimed at refining the topic to make it a researchable and a worth researching topic.

Second, while writing a detailed design for research or the thesis itself, the researcher may sometimes adopt a different writing style for questions and objectives. Research questions may be written as a composite of two or more aspects of research that are intended to be explored. On the other hand, a research objective generally states one single aspect to be explored about the topic. Therefore, a researcher may combine different explorable aspects into one question but still write the objective as a statement reflecting one explorable aspect of the research.