Assignment 1

Problem Statement

The first step in most research and evaluation projects is to clearly define a problem that will be investigated. After this is complete a researcher needs to identify the audience for the project (e.g. who will benefit from the research) and pose a set of specific research questions that will be answered by collecting and analyzing data.

This first assignment will help you identify and clearly describe a research problem that you will investigate throughout the quarter. You may choose to work in groups or individually, but you must follow each of the steps (and deadlines) below in order to get full credit for this assignment.

Step 1: Problem Statement Draft

To write a draft of the research problem statement you will need to first clearly describe the topic you (or your group) are interested in, argue why this topic is relevant or important to a particular audience, and explain what questions you will ask about this research topic. Below are some exercises to get started on the draft. These are not required - if you only want to know what you are responsible for handing in skip to the Draft (turn in) section below.

Exercise to get started (optional)

In a shared document, write a one to two sentence response to the following questions:

Topic: What is the theme, institution, or problem that will be investigated
Audience: Who are the stakeholders for this research? Will it benefit other researchers, library administration, users of an information system, etc.
Relevance: In short, why does this matter? Why is this an important or necessary research project to undertake?

Exercise to go deeper (optional)

In a shared document, start to formulate some assumptions that you have and questions you might ask about the topic you are researching:

Epistemic + Ontological Assumptions: What kind of data is useful, and about what kinds of things? For example - if you are interested in teen’s digital literacy - how will you measure or understand literacy? What constitutes a “teen” ? What kind of data might be available or need to be gathered to understand literacy levels?
Research Questions: Write out three research questions that could be asked and answered about your topic of choice (Your question must begin with How, Who, What, Where or Why)

Draft (turn in)

By October 15th, you should turn in a 1 page (550 words) draft of your research problem statement. This statement should include:

An explanation of your research topic
Why this topic is relevant and who it is relevant to (audience)
No more than two original research questions that you might ask about this topic. The research questions should take the form of an open-ended question that is answerable by gathering and analyzing data.

For the first draft you do not need to cite any literature. If you do, the citations do not count against your word limit, and please use APA formatting.

Draft Grading Rubric

Grading for a draft is based on completion of the following requirements (e.g. you will get full points if all three components are presented in the draft):

Topic (3 pts): Did the student explain their research topic and its scope? Did they provide an overview of the topic or background information?
Relevance and Audience (4 pts): Are the stakeholders identified and did the student justify why this topic is relevant?
Research question(s) (3 pts): Are there two research questions explicitly stated in the draft? Are the research questions open-ended and answerable by gathering and analyzing data.

Please edit and keep the word count of your draft within + / - 10% of 550 words.

Step 2: Problem Statement Final

Once you have completed a draft of Assignment 2 (the literature review) you will likely have a deeper understanding of your topic, and what others have asked or answered about this topic.

To complete Assignment 1 you should revise and improve your problem statement draft with this new knowledge. That is, incorporate what you learned from the literature review into a description of your topic, the audience, and the research questions that you might ask. The final draft of your problem statement should be 2 single-spaced pages (~1100 words not including any citations) - it should include a description of the topic, a description of the audience, a set of research questions, and a justification for why those research questions are appropriate and important to answer.

You must cite literature which supports your ideas in this final draft. Be sure to cite all consulted works using APA formatting.

You can turn the final draft of Assignment in anytime before December 04, 2020.

Final Draft Grading Rubric

In 1100 words…

Topic (5 pts): Introduce the motivation for selecting this topic. Explain your research topic and clearly define its scope and key concept(s). Incorporate what you know from the Literature Review and provide an overview about the topic.
Relevance and Audience (6 pts): Identify stakeholders (audience) and how they influence / are influenced by the topic respectively. Justify why this topic is relevant to the audience.
Research question(s) (5 pts): List no more than two research questions that you will ask about this topic. The research question(s) should be open-ended and answerable by gathering and analyzing data. Define key concepts in the research question(s). Justify why the research question(s) are appropriate and important to answer.

Grading is based on both completion and quality of work.

Overall polished presentation (4 pt): To receive full points, an assignment would be clearly written, well-organized, and balanced. Assignment would be free of grammatical errors and typos, and use the APA citation format.

You can turn the final draft of Assignment to Canvas anytime before or on December 04, 2020.