Formulating Research Problems addresses one of the most critical yet often overlooked aspects of research: how to define and frame the problem at the heart of a study. While most research methods texts devote only a few pages to this question, Johan Alvehus offers a dedicated, accessible, and practical guide that helps students move beyond vague topics and into the development of clear, rigorous, and creative research problems.
The book introduces four complementary approaches. The gap approach builds on existing literature to identify what is missing. The grounded approach starts from empirical material to surface new problems. The mystery approach invites students to create puzzles and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. Finally, the actor approach engages with problems experienced by social actors and reformulates them in theoretical terms. Each approach is explained with clarity, outlining strengths, pitfalls, and examples, so that students can use them independently or in combination. Concise, practical, and versatile, this book is suitable across disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and applied fields.
Already widely adopted in its original Swedish edition, it is designed for undergraduate and Master’s students writing theses, while also offering valuable guidance for DBA and early PhD students developing their research projects.
Table of Contents:
Preface PART I Introduction 1. Introduction 2. Problem for whom? PART II Four different approaches
3. The gap approach 4. The grounded approach 5. The mystery approach 6. The actor approach
Part III Conclusion 7. The role of the problem formulation in a thesis References
About the Author :
Johan Alvehus is Professor of Service Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His research centres on management and leadership in and of professional service organisations, with a special focus on questions of power. He has published in Leadership, Organization Studies, Organization Theory, Journal of Professions and Organizations, and Human Resource Management Journal, among others. He also publishes extensively on methodology and academic writing. His most recent books are The Logic of Professionalism (Bristol University Press) and Crafting Your Thesis (Routledge).
