(classical music)
- Hi everybody Dr. Guy White.
And I am super excited that
you are here about video
for this video about "How to
write a Problem Statement."
I think by far this is one
of the biggest questions
I get for most candidates is
"How do you write a Problem Statement?"
Ironically it's probably
the easiest to write
and if you just know what you're doing.
However I have to say in
advance that this is kind
of a loaded video because the reality is
that until you actually have done a lot
of the background work that is
the you've done a true review
of the literature, it's
really not possible to write
a great Problem Statement yet.
Now it doesn't mean you have
to write your literature review
it just means that you
have to have gone through
the steps of collecting
many, many, many sources
and many, many, many
quotes from those sources,
such that you have the
background knowledge necessary
to write a really great Problem Statement.
So this video is gonna be us
about us talking about how
to write a great Problem Statement,
assuming that you've done all
that great background work.
I'm not gonna spend too much
time to introduce myself,
you probably know who I am.
But if you don't know who I am,
I love playing with my kids,
that is what I want to
do with most of my time.
And yet the reality is
that if you're sitting here
and you're writing a
dissertation or in my case
I'm writing, doing lots
of writing all the time.
I have to make sure that
I'm spending my time well
such that I can get
home and play with them.
It's like I get to play
when the work is done
and chances are you're
delaying life, you're delaying
something such that you can
get this dissertation done.
So let's get this thing done right?
So that way you can move on with your life
and go on to wonderful things.
My wonderful thing is
that I've gone on to,
I've written many books
and I won't bore you with
those titles but just to say
that I've worked on many, many
dissertation committees as a
Chair and committee member.
And so I'm highly qualified
to give you the information
that I am imparting to
you here on this video
and you are highly qualified
to hear what I have to say.
So thanks for joining me.
So today we're gonna be
talking about just three steps,
three short steps this
might be the shortest video
I've ever done.
And a Problem Statement
in the end has to start
with you doing the background
work because until you've done
a true review of the literature,
it's really a complete
waste of your time to attempt
to write a Problem Statement.
In fact it's a complete
waste of time to really try
to write a chapter one
until you've really delved
into the literature and gotten
a lot of background knowledge
about really what people are talking
about around your topic.
I am guilty, I was guilty
during my dissertation writing
of skipping the literature
review step at first
and man, I just kept
trying to write chapter one
and chapter one and just
nothing was clicking
and it was until a good
friend of mine said,
"Well you know you can't
write a chapter one until
you've really outlined a chapter two."
And that was like a big,
like light bulb for me.
I'm like what does that mean?
And for me what that came
down to and what I tell
all my candidates is
really, you must first
before you attempt to write a chapter one,
I mean you might do a small sketch of it.
But until, you can't write
a chapter one until you
have digested about a hundred works
that is books articles et cetera.
Other dissertations and you
should be able to collect
about 400 you should have
collected about 400 quotes
and organized them into
a synthesis matrix,
which I covered in one
of my other videos about
"How to write a literature review."
And once you've collected
those 400 quotes or so,
I mean it's not an exact
science but about that.
You'll start noticing patterns
and you'll have the language
of your topic down and you'll
have a lot of information
about who is saying what.
And what you're gonna see
momentarily when we look
at this Problem Statement
itself is that, real
Problem Statements have
to be totally stooped
in the existing literature,
you can't just make it up.
And so, what I just want to say is that,
if you engage in a true lit
review, you'll be saving
yourself hundreds of hours
of time by not doing all
these rewrites of a fake
chapter one that really
isn't gonna go anywhere until
you actually do the work
of really researching
the lit, going in there
and finding out really
what people wanna know
about the subject that
you're wanting to study.
And I think there's a note there
is that a lot of candidates
go in to writing a dissertation
with such a firm idea
of what they want to write
that they forget that
they can't just simply go and justify
that using the literature.
They actually have to do a
true search the literature
and be open to the fact that my goodness,
there might be something
that those researchers
are wanting you to examine,
that is outside what you had
in mind from the get-go.
So I just wanna say that once
you do that true lit review,
you're in good place to start
and if you haven't done that
I mean go, I mean watch
the rest of this video
and then go back and look at
my literature review video
and do that first.
So the second step in building
a problem statement then is
to understand what the chapter one
structure actually looks like you know.
You can and you probably have,
if you're in this process,
you've already looked
at many dissertations,
you might have looked at some
kind of dissertation handbook
and you have a general idea of
what a chapter one involves.
You know, what each of the
sections are most likely,
however I've definitely seen
some candidates submit things
that don't have all the sections
required, so I do recommend
that you get a list of
all the sections required.
I do have another video
that I'll be posting shortly
about this exact topic how
to structure at chapter one.
And in addition to that,
I think that really
what most candidates need
to understand is that,
you need to understand
that there's some nuances
in chapter one and if you
know what the nuances are,
if you know the goals of
each section, you'll have
understanding of where
your writing is supposed
to be headed over time.
So let's look at that specifically.
So a chapter one, I'm sure
you've heard it is like a funnel
and not really dwelling there
too long but just to say is
that you know, the first
sentence of your dissertation
is something very about
it's a general statement
about a topic you're
interested in and that's
in the background section
this first section
called The Background section.
And your Background
section needs to start with
a very general poignant
situation in the world.
I like saying that, some
people say it starts
with the general topic and
that sounds really boring.
I mean really the reason you're
writing this dissertation
and you're focusing on the
research that you're considering
is because something important
is happening in the world
and you are interested in that.
So you wanna start your
Background section, sometimes
there's a separate introduction section.
But you start the Background
section by talking about,
what is this poignant
situation in the world at large
and really using a set
of logical statements,
logical paragraphs, you're
presenting us why we should care
about this topic and you're
narrowing us down very slowly
to a more and more specific
problem that will be discussing.
So I guess the way to put it is that
whole Background section is
about getting our feet wet,
telling us that there's
this interesting situation
in the world.
And then logically telling us,
what's the big deal about this thing?
Why do we need a focus on this?
And then that gets us down
to the Problem Statement
and the Problem Statement
answers that question,
why do we need to focus on this, right?
And the Problem Statement
itself has three parts
and I'll be talking about that momentarily
but in basic, basically it
starts out by telling us,
what the problem is in one
sentence, what is the problem?
What do we know about it?
What don't we know about it?
And what our researchers
telling us that we should know.
Now for me as a dissertation
writer this last sentence here
so like life-changing, what
researchers want us to know.
Most candidates go into a
dissertation, thinking that
they're gonna need to write something
about something they care about.
And that's part of the
reason we go and we write
a dissertation is we care about the topic.
But the key is we have to find something
that researchers want us to research.
And that's what you have to do
is you have to find something
that researchers want us to research.
And so in this next
slide, set of slides here,
you're gonna see exactly what you need,
so that way you can know
what you're looking for
when you're doing that literature review.
So that way you know what
should you be looking for
in gathering to support this great
dissertation idea that you have.
Now the Problem Statement
itself is just a precursor
to the Purpose Statement and
the Purpose Statement provides
a specific study that
addresses a very narrow
sliver or part of the problem.
And I guess the way to look
at this is that there's a lot
of problems out in the world
and your study can't focus on
those large set of
problems, it has to focus
on a very narrow, narrow problem.
And then your study
itself really only looks
at a very small part of
that problem as a whole
and so I guess what I'm
trying to get at here is that
your Purpose Statement
itself is super narrow.
I have another video you
can look at about how
to write a Purpose Statement.
But just to say is that what
we're trying to do is go
from very general down to very
narrow and the way to do that
is by understanding how
each one of the sections
play off one another.
So for example when we
write a Problem Statement
it can be quite easy but we
have to do that background work
and once you've done that
background work so check this out.
This is what a Problem
Statement actually looks like,
so first of all everyone has a
different style when it comes
to writing these things you
know, your Chair is gonna have
an opinion, your University
might have an opinion
but when I look at all the
dissertations throughout all
of you know academia right
now at least in the humanities
you know, in the social sciences you know,
education and so on.
What I'm seeing is that most
of them come in this flavor
of three paragraphs,
there's three paragraphs,
is the paragraph about
what we know, the paragraph
of what we don't know, and
the paragraph about what they
as in the researchers want us to know.
So this first paragraph
starts out by making
a very direct statement.
It says the problem is and
it in one sentence you need
to be able to encapsulate the problem
that your dissertation is focusing upon.
And then the rest of that
paragraph is focused about,
focused on providing
many, many, many examples,
I guess the way to put it
is, we're trying to show
a synthesis, many authors
together, what are many authors
saying that we know about the problem?
What do we know about this
problem that you're presenting?
And then you wanna talk
about what we don't know
and similarly you wanna present what all
the authors together are
saying that we don't know
about this specific issue.
And then finally what they
want us to know, this paragraph
this third paragraph in your
problem statement section,
talks about what researchers
want us to find out
about this specific problem.
Now if you're been paying
attention to my language,
what you're hearing over and
over again is that we have
to know what researchers
have said, what researchers
are saying we don't know,
and what researchers
are wanting us to discover
in studies like yours.
And until we know that, until
we know what researchers want
and what they know, what they don't know,
there's just simply no way you can write
a problem statement.
Because that's what this
whole sections about,
is about presenting what
everyone else is saying
that we know, what everyone
else is saying we don't know
and what they're saying we need
to know and we need to study
like in great dissertations like yours.
So once you have that
information, what I wanna do now
is I wanna provide some auditing steps.
I wanna tell you what are some marks
of a great problem statement.
And here they are; is that
each paragraph should start
with a logical statement
that really just sets you up,
sets up the rest of the paragraph.
It really it's just telling
us what the paragraph's about.
So the example I get here
is that numerous researchers
have studied and studied, excuse me,
I have a typo and error, oh my goodness,
numerous researchers have
studied transformational
leadership in Fortune 500 companies.
And then you imagine there
to be three citations there.
If it's in the second
paragraph that paragraph what
we don't know the paragraph
might start by saying something
like; "Despite all of our knowledge
around the problem of ABC,
researchers point out that
there is much we don't know."
And then you'd list in that paragraph what
we don't know about this problem.
If it was that last paragraph
what researchers want us
to know, you might say something like;
"Recent contemporary
researchers are urging us
to research three key
areas of this problem."
Notice how specific that
sounds and that's exactly
what you want to hear in
these opening paragraphs
or just be or these paragraphs
of the Problem Statement
I should say.
And each citation within
these paragraphs should not be
one-off single citations they should be
many authors synthesize together.
And I think this is a key here is
that your Problem Statement
section should showcase
how well you've been
synthesizing that literature,
how much information you've gotten
and the way you do that is
you're showing what authors
are saying alongside one another.
What authors are saying together.
Even if they didn't write together.
You know that author A
in 1990 said something
and author B in 1995 said the same thing,
that's strong writing and
it's called synthesis.
And that's what we want
to have present here
in this section in the
Problem Statement section.
And in the end, you should be able
to read your Problem Statement.
And then the next sentence that appears
is your Purpose Statement
and you should be able to say
or your reader should be able to say
"Oh I totally understand then why
we're doing this study."
Because your Purpose Statement
in your Problem Statement
are so carefully aligned.
That it just makes complete
sense that since the research,
since we know this and we
don't know this and researchers
are telling us that we
need to learn whatever,
it's of course we would
do this type of study
and of course I'd read
this Purpose Statement
and that's what this would say.
So I think the overall
message here is two things
number one is you need to do
the background work of doing
a great review of the literature,
even if you've not written
a literature review you should
have lots and lots and lots
and lots of quotes collected.
Such that you can start getting
a pulse on what researchers
are saying about your topic and about
what you're considering to be
the the purpose of your study.
And in addition to that I guess
the second thing I'm saying
is that this section is
so step by step, it's one
of the easier sections to
write in your dissertation.
All you have to do is have
done the background work
to actually get here.
So in the end what I would
just say is you know,
go out there and faithfully
conduct that literature review
and think about the idea
that you are walking
every single day through
this process and there is
this mountain that you're
climbing there is a...
You're walking towards
I don't know I feel like
you're walking towards
that horizon and there
is hope over that horizon.
There is the next step of
your life, the next thing
that you get to get to in
your life over that horizon
and what I would just say
is keep walking folks.
I'm so excited that you
are watching these videos
and that you're commenting,
I so appreciate the replies
to my emails and the
comments you've been leaving.
And man, just keep doing
that and I promise you,
if you keep commenting and
replying to me like you are now,
I'll keep making these videos.
You're a blessing to me.
Thank you so much.
Have a great day, bye.
