Relation of the Problem to Resources

Depending on the resources available and urgency experienced, it should be reasonable to expect that any given individual or organization will identify the problem or problems for research for the immediate future. Resources include willing and capable people, support facilities like lab space, a library, and the money to buy or build the required equipment and materials involved. Conversely, to make use of such resources, it is imperative that there should be problems. It is understandable that the only per­son who gets to know the intricacies and subtleties of the prob­lem is the researcher. Hence, a problem may not have been defined in all its details before the researcher arrives on the scene. In outline, however, even as a sketch, the problem should be known to the person (or organization) who is responsible for putting the resources together, be it a guide, director, supervisor, or professor.

We may think of the problem as the meeting point of three mutually dependent driving forces: (1) the problem itself as defined earlier, (2) the problem solver, namely, the researcher, and (3) the immediate beneficiary, if and when the solution is found. It is possible that a single individual embodies all these forces, which is a very happy situation. Perhaps, research of the highest order, resulting in landmark theories in the basic sci­ences, is of this kind, the benefit here being mostly intellectual. On the other hand, the experiments of Thomas Edison in his early years could also approximate the same ideal, the benefit being mostly material. Unfortunately, most researchers do not fit such a description. Many graduate students take up research as a means to earn a degree as a qualification for an academic career or research positions in an organization. Depending on the funding acquired by professors, students agree to work on cer­tain previously identified problems with a limited degree of flex­ibility. A graduate student entering a university or other research-oriented institution of higher learning and given free rein to research any problem he or she likes is rather rare. Some of the well-known research institutions employ hundreds of career researchers, and most of the work they do offers little room for idealism. The researchers are, more or less, assigned the problems, often within a time frame, the problems having been accepted on the basis of profitability. Industrial research and development (R&D) is another area in which researchers wear tight jackets. The products and priorities dictate the problems. It is not uncommon for a researcher to be shifted from one prob­lem to another, often never again seeing the problem he or she made some progress with or “nearly finished.” Many R&D researchers accept even that as “lucky,” compared to the fairly common situation where a boss, usually a “manager,” must bal­ance the budget and casts his or her eyes on the researcher as a dispensable, nonproductive entity, preferring any other produc­tion or maintenance personnel. Getting the paycheck becomes a greater priority for the researcher than fighting for a selected problem. As research work became wider spread and more a pro­fession than a pleasure, it became institutionalized.

Even though the present-day researcher is, more often than not, enmeshed in an organization, the need to make many deci­sions, particularly about the layout and details of the research problem, is very much a part of his responsibility. The problem, at best, may be handed over to him, somewhat like a sketch for a building to be built. The task of preparing a plan, equivalent to the blueprints for the builder, is left to him. To push the analogy further, whether the building is a country residence or a subur­ban apartment complex or a multistory office building in a met­ropolitan downtown area determines the considerations to be incorporated into the blueprints. Each of the above types of buildings is a specialized job. If the builder is not a big company with many specialists, but an individual with limited resources of all kinds, including experience, then he, first of all, must decide whether the job, if offered, is within his capacity to fulfill. The individual researcher is in the same position.

Often it may happen that a researcher, either out of despera­tion or overconfidence, will end up as the custodian of a prob­lem, even before he or she has given any thought to its essential features, its extent, or the match between the problem and him­self. A few remarks commonly applicable to all the researchers in the process of making a commitment to specific problems are discussed as follows.

Source: Srinagesh K (2005), The Principles of Experimental Research, Butterworth-Heinemann; 1st edition.