Please Advise Me On My Research Proposal

[Dapy]

Hi everybody,
I am a new member and also I am a new postgrad student in SA.My research topic is"Knowlede,Attitudes,and Behaviour of Physiotherapy students towards Obesity:Implication for education and practice".
My problem is how to how to identify a research problem ,research question ,and developing hypotheses,I need to have a broad idea before meeting my supervisor.
I will appreciate it if anybody could offer me a suggestion.
My kind regards.
Dapy

[sdkashif]

You need to study the research methodolgy before starting over the project.

[Aisha_kb]

Hi there...
That is quiet a broad topic and there are many ways you can approach it. You can do a simple questionnaire based study where you could formulate a questionnire which will give you the information you need and present it graphically or statistically. Or a complicated correlative study where you compare the ideologies of new physiotherapy students of 1 st year to those of final year students regarding Obesity. That way you will be able to find out whether students had any idea about obesity and how the view changes after being educated about it.

Its a very interesting topic. And will provide some really useful information...

Good luck.

[Dapy]

Thanks guys for the reply.
Actually there have been many studies done in this are but none has been done to test Physiotherapist attitudes.I am going to employ a quantitative paradigm ie using numerical values and statistics to collect and analyse.But my problem is how to formulate a research problem and questions.
I look forward to your advice.
Thanks.

[oscar]

I know your pain- I'm in the middle of my research project at the moment!

The way I came up with my question was to basically read a lot of research on my area and look for the gaps in the research, usually if you just read the limitations of a study you can come up with endless possibilities! It sounds like you have an idea of the broad question, just needs refining.

Have you looked on the net for "forming a research question"? try one of the search engines- there is tons of stuff on writing research projects, that might be worth a try. Don't forget your question may change as you develop the project, my last dissertation question/title (for my undergraduate degree) changed up until I handed the thing in!

[Aisha_kb]

Hey Dapy,
Oscar is right, you need to do ALOT of reading before you get some idea of what question to formulate. Another thing you can do is get really into your research, thing of various starting points and work with it, for instance if you wanna start with collecting data, do so, if you wanna formulate your methodology also do so... It kind sounds confusing but somehow you will find your way around it and come out with what you need.
The only way to clean up a mess is to just start!!!!
Another thing you can do is tell us more of the things you have found out, be more explicit about your ideas and maybe we can guide you through it... Sometimes you need an outsider to see the sense in chaos. Or if you have a collegue you can talk to about it would be good.
I found talking about the research to someone else helps too, that way, through your own thought processing you find your answers.

Good luck.

[Dapy]

Thanks guys for this laudable project(Physiobase forum),I will always count on you.As soon as I have a slightest cue,i will let you in for further advice.
Kind regards.

[riyad]

hey there. am Riyad final yr pt stud in Mauritius. i need help to find a project title, ne help plzzz? my limitations are that i dnt hav equipment to carry out tests so da simplest method would b most welcome. am finkin of doin sumfin like a survey questionnaire. plz help me find a way out. am lost..