Defining Your Research: A Guide to Social Relevance
Defining Your Research Field
What aspects of reality will your research focus on? Avoid generic topics; instead, concentrate on specific dimensions within the context of your subject.
Tips for Delimiting Your Research Field:
- Clearly state the reasons for choosing this specific area of social reality, defining key concepts.
- Define the scope: What is included in your study, and what is excluded? What are the boundaries of your research?
- Formulate a key problem: Identifying the core issue is crucial. For example, while “youth” itself isn’t a problem, certain aspects of youth may present challenges for young people and society.
- Introduce the reader to the problem and reference relevant developments.
- Transform a series of questions into a structured sequence of issues. Breaking down a problem into smaller, manageable parts is an effective approach.
For social workers, a key social reality often lies within their daily experiences. However, it can be challenging to view these experiences as broader social phenomena.
Selecting a Research Problem:
- Choose based on your values and interests: Commitment to your research goals is essential. Selecting a topic solely to fulfill a requirement can lead to failure and a constant temptation to switch topics.
- Ensure social relevance or general interest: The research should address a significant issue.
- Verify the availability of sources: Pursuing imaginative problems without sufficient data often leads to stalled investigations.
- Check with existing theory: Review key contributions in your field, covering areas like community integration, attitude changes, behaviors, anomie, and political, religious, or economic factors.
- Follow opportunities: Capitalize on unique circumstances, such as access to individuals involved in a specific field (relational opportunity) or timely events (timing).
- Consider institutional priorities: Research aligned with institutional interests may benefit from grants or scholarships.
Brainstorming
Conduct uncensored brainstorming, focusing on diverse areas of social reality as potential problems.
A common mistake is including excessive, out-of-context information, especially regarding territorial context. Information from readily available sources must be clearly linked to the research subject. Prioritize and select relevant information carefully.
Social Relevance
Social relevance is closely tied to defining the research field. Projects often integrate field boundaries and social relevance into a single chapter titled “Context.”
The subject under study, such as youth, is not just a problem but a significant concern for society.