Formulating Research Problems: Creative Approaches for Student Research

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 toward the development of clear, rigorous, and creative research problems.

This 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 its strengths, pitfalls, and examples, enabling students to 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, this book 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.

Johan Alvehus is Professor of Service Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His research centers on management and leadership in professional service organizations, 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).