SPECIAL MATERIALS Periodicals
5. Presence of One or More Environments to which the Difficulty of Problem Pertains
A change in environment may produce or remove a problem.
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A research consumer may have doubts as to which will be the most efficient means in one environment but would have no such doubt in another. For example, a person may have a problem involving a decision as to what kind of coat to wear on a clear day. But should it rain, he would have no doubt about the propriety of wearing his raincoat.
The range of environments over which a problem may be said to exist vanes from one to many. Some problems are specific to only one environment while others are quite general.
The formulation of the problem consists in making various components or the problem explicit.
John Dewey says "It is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well put is half solved. To find out what the problem or problems are which a problematic situation presents, is to be well along in inquiry. To mistake the problem involved is to cause subsequent inquizy to be irrelevant. Without a problem there is blind groping in the dark."
If we go merely by appearances, it would seem fairly easy to pose a problem for research. But this is not so in reality. Even so great a scientist as Drawin has testified to the difficulty in posing a problem. In his Origin of Species, he wrote, "Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems were than to solve them... ."This is so, explains Merton, because "in science, the questions that matter are of a particular kind. They are questions so formulated that the answers to them will confirm, amplify or variously revise some part of what is currently taken as knowledge in the field. In short, although evely problem in science involves a question or a series of questions, not .every question qualifies as a scientific problem."
Merton has presented a powerful case for investigating the process of problem-finding. Although the process of problem solving has been subjected to intensive investigation, inquiries into the process of problem finding, Merton points out, have suffered a relative neglect.
He makes an attempt to identify some of-what is involved in seeking
and formulating a problem for social research. Merton distinguishes three principal components in the progressive formulation of a problem
for social research. These are:
(1) The originating questions (2) The rationale
(3) The specifying questions
1. Originating Questions
The originating questions represent the beginnings of certain difficulties or challenges which, formulated in much specific terms as would indicate where exactly the answers to them can be searched for, attain the status of a research problem. Thus, the originating questions constitute the initial phase in the process of problem formulation.
Originating questions are of different types. One class of originating questions calls for discovering a particular body of social facts. Such questions may express a doubt as to whether the alleged social facts are really facts. Needless to say that before social facts can be explained, it is advisable to ensure that they are actually facts. It is not unusual for scientists to provide explanations for things that never were. It is to see that,"if the facts used as a basis for reasoning are ill-established or erroneous. Everything will crumble or befalsified;.. errors .inscientific theories most often originate in errors of fact."
A recognition that social fcts are not always what they appear to be, leads the researcher to raise questions aimed at discovering a particular body of facts. These questions, do not yet constitute the problem, although they do constitute.an essential step in that direction.
Such questions are typically prompted by efforts to 'explain' social patterns which the researchers feel have not yet been established as genuine pattern. Such questions, sometimescalled as fact finding questions, hold a particular significance for social sciences. This is so because men are apt to assume that they know the facts about the working of society or polity without hard investigation, because
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society and polity areafterall their native habitat. Contrary to this assumption, not all, plausible belief about our native habitat are essentially true.
Another type, of onginating questions directs attention to the search for uniformities of relations between classes of social variables..
"An example of such a 'question' is what is there about the structure of societies that determines the kinds of deviant acts that occur within their confines?"
Such questions, it, would seem, are formulated in terms of broadly delimited categories of social variables but they do not indicate specifically which particular variables in each class may be germane to the issue. Such questions usually derive from a general theoretical orientation rather than from a well-articulated theory.
It is quite evident that the originating questions differ in their scope as well as their degree of specificity. For example,in the discipline of sociology, a large number of originating questions are addressed to sociological variables within one or another institutional sphere of society. 'Does the degree to which management takes the teacher's views into account in their decision-making process affect the degree to which the teacher takes the students' views into accout, in the class room?" would be a question of this type?
But such relatively specific questions concerned with a particular institutional sphere (e.g., the school system) may have a potential bearing on comparable organizations in which role incumbents may reproduce in their behaviour vis-a-vis a subordinate his experience in relation to his/her superior.
Originating questions of another kind are put in such a form that they can be addressed to a variety of institutional spheres; e.g the question, 'Do the diverse social roles that members of different social classes are called upon to' play have consequences more important for their personalities than have their class positions'?, is one of this kind. It should be borne in mind that neither the more general nor the more specific versions of the originating questions claim an exclusive value; each has its own value in augmenting knowledge of particular kinds.
Summarily, the origmatmg questions are of different kinds and emanate from different sources. Some are the questions of desriptive fact, about observed empirical generalizations, some enquire into the sources of the observed patterns of social organization and others are concerned with their consequences, and so on.
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RATIONALE OF QUESTIONSThe originating question is just one component of the problem.
Another is the rationale of the question. Rationale is the statement of reasons why a particular question is worth putting across. The rationale states what will happen to other parts of knowledge or practice if the question is answered, i.e., how the answer to the question will contribute to theory and/or practice. In this way, the rationale helps to effect a distinction between the scientifically consequential and trivial questions. In short, the rationale states the case for the question in the court of scientific opinion." The requirement of a rationale arrests the flux of scientifically trivial questions and enlarges the volume of important ones.
As a rationale for science as a whole, it refers simply to knowledge as a self-contained end. It ignores rather than denies, the possibility that a new bit of knowledge will contribute to practical concerns, viz, power, comfort, safety, prestige, etc. The scientist may regard his deep interest in a question-as a strong enough reason for pursuing it. But sooner or later, if the question and its answers are to become a part of the corpus of science, they must be shown to be relevant to other ideas and facts in the discipline.
The practical rationale makes out a case for the question by pointing out that its answers will help people to achieve practical values, i.e., health, comfort and productivity, etc. This is not to deny that a question raised mainly with an eye on the practical value of its answer may have important consequences for the theoretical system. It is evident that a particular question may have import both for systematic knowledge and for practical uses largely, because the inquiry undertaken with an eye on any one has unintended consequences for the other.