Selecting your problem
Problems are necessary in science
Problems are good
- Commonly people avoid problems, and I don’t blame them; problems can cause a lot of stress.
- But in science WE LOVE problems. And you will have to find at least one problem to answer.
Types of problems
Booth et al. (2009):
Practical problems: what should we do?
Conceptual problems: what should we think?
You have a problem … so what?
- A practical problem will have two parts: a condition and costs:
Condition: Social media have algorithms to increase engagement. Cost: People with eating disorders will be exposed and engaged to body disatisfaction content.
- If the first cost does not answer the first so what? then you mentioned other costs: Cost: Users will not have the ability to stop watching body disatisfaction content. So what? Cost: People with eating disorders could starve to death or commit suicide.
You have a problem … then try to understand it
- “Conceptual problem arises when we do not understand something about the world as well as we would like. We solve a conceptual problem not by doing something to change the world but by answering a question that helps us understand it better” (Booth et al., 2009).
Example:
- I’m studying how people with eating disorders are affected by algorithms in social media because I want to understand how I can propose a more ethical use of algorithms.
Communalities and differences in practical and conceptual problems
- Both types of problems will have a condition however a practical problem will have a cost while a conceptual problem will have a consequence. The consenquece is if don’t answer one question, we won’t be able to answer other related questions.
Answering the question of how romantic movies have changed in the last fifty years (condition/first question) helps us answer a more important question: How have our cultural depictions of romantic love changed? (consequence/larger, more important second question)
Let’s see some examples
Is the following example a conceptual or practical problem?
Study the effect of being bullied on the devolopment of social skills. People who were victims will be prone to depression and lack of social skills in adulthood.
Let’s see some examples
Is the following example a conceptual or practical problem?
Study the effect of emotional videos on event reconstruction. Memories are impacted by emotional content, therefore this study helps to understand the influence of emotional visual content on the codification and recovery of events.
Let’s see some examples
Is the following example a conceptual or practical problem?
The study will focus on the relationship between parenting styles and response styles to depression. We want to understand how parenting styles might shape coping styles when people are depressed.