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Volume :26 Issue : 4 1998
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Dissertations and Methodological Problems in Arab Universities: A Case Study
Auther : Saud D. al-Duhayan / Abdllah H. al-Dolaimi
This study examines a major difficulty that usually faces graduate students in the process of preparing their dissertations, namely, the correct statement and definition of their research problem. A random sample of twenty Master of Arts dissertations submitted to the Department of Social Studies at King Saud University was subjected to content analysis. It was found that while 80% of the students made a successful statement of their research problem, only 25% had phrased it properly. The main obstacles students faced included (1) the inability to distinguish between stating and formulating the research problem, (2) difficulty in stating and defining the research problem irrespective and independent of the methodology used, (3) ignorance of the theoretical implications of the statement of the problem, and finally (4) mistaking the ``description’’ of the research problem for its formulation.