BUT

Naviagating the problem range brings one slowly up the trail towards the HYPOTHESIS. One can only start climbing this trail through dogmatism and confusion after a review of the literature. One can not just decide to do "research". One needs to have some curiosity and find a problem. Identifying the problem that one wants to spend considerable creative effort and a tedious amount of time can be difficult. It is important to establish the atmosphere and culture that gives you ideas and possible projects. One of the early steps is to think about questions and problems as you study and read. Obtain an "ideas" book. When you think of questions, put them in the book. When you see possible projects put them in the book. This permits you to have a constant resource.

As you grow professionally, you need to focus your research interests; however, keep up your "ideas books" as research funding, interests, and focuses always changes. There is always a problem that one faces in deciding on a research emphasis. How narrowerly does one focus a research line? Certainly, knowing everything in the world about a broad topic offers special problems. If focused narroowly, one can do research with some degree of expertise. Unfotunately, my personally feeling is that foods, nutrition and food systems management problems frequently require an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving. Managing the balance between the extremes of being too focused versus being too broad is difficult and just requires experience.

Let's talk about the reality of selecting a research problem. Certainly, one has the option of deciding the broad area of research. For example instead of just food quality, one might focus on meat research, or vegetable research, or even potato research. It is critical that you have some idea of what your broad topic will be. After that, the press for funding and support may focus your ideas into particular channels. Great research ideas are only useful if one can undertake the research. Generally, this requires money. Even if all the research is simply sitting and thinking great and profound thoughts, you require money to live on. One can find out potential funding opportunities by first reviewing the research and seeing who supported the research for reported referred work. Another approach is to access the Foundation and the Government Grants and Proposals and see how close funding opportunities fall to your interests.

Over the years, a variety of research projects have come from my idea book.

Discussion

Michael Carter, "Problem Solving Reconsidered: A Pluralistic Theory of Problems." College English 50(1988): 551-65
Reviews the characteristics of "ill-defined problems.

John Swales, "Research Articles in English." Chapter 7 in Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge UP 1990. Analyzes introductions to research articles showing the pattern of defining a territory, defining a niche, and occupying the niche. Stating a problem is a way of defining a niche. Swales summarizes this pattern as "Create a Research Space" (CARS). In a way, your preliminary proposal creates a research space.

An important part of the graduate program is development of a research project. Selection of this project is a combination of creativity and pragmatism. The initial step is to, within your area of interest, select a faculty mentor with similar or closely related interests. The next step is to discuss with this faculty member the possibility of working with them on some aspect within your interest area. Once this is established you are ready to begin framing your research.