Research Problem Framer

Example 1 — Undergraduate humanities paper

Input question: How have cultural depictions of romantic love in American movies changed since 1970?

Step 2 — Problem type: Conceptual. The condition is not knowing how depictions have changed; there is no immediate practical cost, but there is an epistemic consequence.

Step 3 — Condition: We do not yet know how romantic movies have changed their depictions of love and relationships over the past fifty years.

Step 4 — So What? cascade:

Step 5 — Pure or applied: Pure. The consequence is about understanding cultural influence, not about making better movies or fixing relationship expectations. No practical fourth step needed.

Problem statement: > We do not yet know how American romantic movies have changed their depictions of love and partnership over the past fifty years. Without that knowledge, we cannot fully understand how Hollywood storytelling shapes the expectations young people bring to romantic relationships — a question central to cultural psychology and media studies.

Example 2 — Graduate policy research

Input question (from 3-step formula): How did the loss of NASA's Hubble instruments change the agency's approach to telescope design and redundancy planning?

Step 2 — Problem type: Hybrid. There is a conceptual problem (what we do not know about how institutional learning works after a major failure) linked to a practical one (how NASA and similar agencies should design future systems).

Step 3 — Condition: We do not know how the Hubble failure changed NASA's internal design review and redundancy protocols.

Step 4 — So What? cascade:

Step 5 — Framing: Applied. The consequence refers to doing (designing better protocols), so the project is applied research.

Problem statement: > We do not know how the Hubble Space Telescope's optical failure changed NASA's internal design review and redundancy planning processes. Without that understanding, large engineering agencies lack a documented model for how institutional learning after catastrophic failure translates — or fails to translate — into lasting procedural change.

Example 3 — Professional context

Input: "I'm writing a report on why our engineering team's velocity dropped after switching to remote work. My manager wants to know if we should go back to in-office or just change our remote policies."

Step 2 — Problem type: Practical problem (velocity drop costs delivery time and morale) → motivates a conceptual problem (we don't know which aspect of remote work caused the drop).

Step 3 — Condition: We do not know whether the velocity drop is caused by collaboration friction, tooling gaps, scheduling misalignment, or some combination.

Step 4 — So What? cascade:

Step 5 — Framing: Applied. Consequence refers to doing (making the right policy decision).

Problem statement: > We do not yet know whether our team's velocity decline after the remote transition stems from collaboration friction, scheduling misalignment, tooling inadequacy, or a combination of factors. Without that diagnosis, any intervention — including a return to in-office work — risks fixing the wrong variable and leaving the actual cause unaddressed.