What is your research problem?Choosing a research problem seems to be the most difficult thing to accomplish, if my thesis advisees' experiences are to be my gauge.
Through several years of service as thesis adviser for some of the Communication Arts students, it was the rare case when someone would present a research problem that seemed solid and well-thought out. Rarer would be the proposal that promised to be a unique contribution to the study of communication. In most cases, students would confuse research topics for research problems or assume that because they had a list of research questions then they now had a research problem. So how do you come up with a research problem? 
Your teacher in Research Paper Writing (COMM 2 in UP) might have told you to start with a topic you're most interested in. And your teacher is right. You need to choose a subject matter you're invested in because you'll be working on it over a year's time.
But since you're required to produce an undergraduate thesis for your Communication Arts degree, you also need to narrow this interest to your area of study. In your case, that means media. Jane Stokes, in her How to Do Media and Cultural Studies (London: Sage Publications, 2003), suggests asking yourself what interests you about the study of media--particularly about your own use of media, your experiences in studying or producing media content, and your access to or contacts in the media industry. To be continued | Topics
 Research Problem by Nino Soria de Veyra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Philippines License.  |
