Problem Statement

Problem statement for a thesis

The problem statement of MSc thesis defines the setting, focus and purpose of the work. The key questions that should be answered by a reasonable research plan can be summarized as follows [1]:

• Problem statement
  • Unit of study: About what?
  • Motivation: Why?
  • Research goal: Why do we want to know?
  • Relevant concepts & theory: Meaning of key terms; What do we know already?
  • Research questions: What do we want to know?
• Research design
  • What are we going to do to answer the questions?
• Validation of the design
  • Is this going to answer our questions?
• How you plan to analyze the results?

Depending on the topic and type of the thesis, there may be several additional questions that need to be answered. A good set of guidelines for work containing some form of evaluation can be found in the paper linked above.

When planning and carrying out your MSc work, it is important to understand what a reader would expect from such work. The theses should exhibit the application of the principles of repeatability, reproducibility and rigor [2], and it is recommended to plan for appropriate measures during the definition of the problem statement.