Constructing the research question: from gap spotting to problematisation

Every MSci proposal carries a research question, and every question arrives with an origin story. The first version says that no study has yet done this, so the project fills a gap. The second says that a body of work holds an assumption doing work it cannot bear, and that the project will test it. This first of ten units argues that the first move describes the boundary of the student's reading, and the nine units that follow build the plan from there. The second makes a claim about the literature that can be argued for and against. A plan is stronger when it names which move it made and why.

Two terms need fixing. Gap spotting locates an absence in a literature and formulates a question from it. Problematisation identifies an assumption a literature takes for granted, evaluates it, and generates a question from a competing assumption. A gap can be asserted from a reading list. An assumption can only be named by reading closely enough to see what a field does not say.

What gap spotting is, and why it dominates

Sandberg and Alvesson (2010) reviewed 52 articles in organisation studies and built a typology of how researchers construct questions from existing literature. The most common move across paradigmatic camps was to spot a gap and formulate the question from it. The authors record their surprise at that dominance, given the recognition that theory becomes influential when it challenges assumptions. They name a set of social norms in the field that reward gap spotting, which makes the move a convention of the community rather than a lapse by individual authors.

Two handbooks explain why it is taught. Bell (1993) treats the review as the activity through which a first-time researcher's question is refined. Booth (2003) organises the enterprise around a question and a problem rather than a topic. Neither distinguishes an absence that was demonstrated from one merely not found. Why nobody has done this is the question a gap-spotting story cannot answer.

Problematisation: naming the assumption makes the question arguable

Alvesson and Sandberg (2011) supply the constructive half, proposing problematisation as a methodology. It identifies and challenges the assumptions underlying an existing literature. It then generates questions from the competing assumption rather than from an absence. Their target is the established route of spotting gaps, which they argue yields questions that are technically new but not theoretically interesting.

Locke and Golden-Biddle (1997) show where the contribution is made. From a sample of published organisation studies articles they built a grounded theory of how authors construct an opportunity for contribution. They found that authors first establish coherence with prior work and then problematise it. Contribution is argued into existence by positioning rather than discovered in a topic, so the review rather than the title carries the claim.

A student proposes that no one has measured how older adults use voice assistants for medication reminders, including a user who cannot see the screen. Read as a problematisation, the student asks why the field assumes the reminder is the difficult part. The question then becomes whether the difficulty lies in how a reminder is negotiated between the person taking the medicine and whoever set the device up.

Interestingness is a relation between a claim and an audience

The warrant for problematisation is not novelty but interestingness. Davis (1971) gave that idea its founding statement: interesting theories deny an assumption of their audience while non-interesting theories affirm one.

Bartunek, Rynes and Ireland (2006) show the idea is contested in practice, setting interestingness against the pull of incremental rigour. It must therefore be argued for a named audience rather than asserted. The argument can then be disagreed with, which is what makes it examinable.

The question is the pivot of the design

A question is not only a claim about a literature; it constrains everything else in the plan. Maxwell (1996) sets out qualitative design as an interactive model. In it, purposes, conceptual framework, research questions, methods and validity constrain one another, with the question as the hinge. That is what makes a question testable before any data exist.

Rocco and Plakhotnik (2009) name a conflation that weakens proposals. They distinguish the literature review, the theoretical framework and the conceptual framework, and find the three routinely treated as one. A proposal that cannot separate what is known from the framework it will use cannot say what the question rests on.

The question still has to yield something

Whetten (1989) set out the ingredients a reviewer looks for: the factors, the relationships among them, and the rationale for why those relationships hold. The first two can be derived from the literature, while the third makes a piece theoretical; changing only the first two is a refinement. Whetten wrote that test from the editor's chair at Academy of Management Review. There, the existing treatises on theory proved too unwieldy to use in correspondence with authors and reviewers. The test therefore arrives as a set of ingredients, not as a finding from a study of reviewers.

Corley and Gioia (2011) refine that judgement into two dimensions. A contribution varies in originality, from incremental to revelatory, and in utility, from scientific to practical. The question is not whether work is theoretical but where it sits. Sutton and Staw (1995) sharpen the point from the other direction. They argue that references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses are not theory, though each is used in place of it. The test for a proposal is whether its explanation survives the removal of the model diagram and the hypothesis list.

Falsifiability and boundedness: what a proposed question must pass

A question that cannot be wrong is not a research question. Bacharach (1989) proposes ground rules for evaluating theories, with criteria for the variables, constructs and relationships that compose one, including falsifiability and boundedness. Theory is a statement of relations among constructs, bounded by stated assumptions, and much work called theoretical is descriptive. He also records the lines of tension between the two main criteria he sets out. A theory can therefore be judged well on one and badly on the other, rather than passing or failing as a whole.

Wacker (1998) turns the same concern into a checklist: theory must supply conceptual definitions, a bounded domain, relationships among the concepts, and predictions. A problematised question that cannot say what result would falsify the competing view has produced a provocation rather than a study.

Contested question: is problematisation the better move, and could anything settle it?

The literature does not agree that problematisation is superior. Sandberg and Alvesson (2010) and Alvesson and Sandberg (2011) hold that gap spotting yields questions that are technically new but theoretically uninteresting. On their account, problematisation is the route to influence. Davis (1971) supplies the criterion, and Locke and Golden-Biddle (1997) show the mechanism is textual positioning.

The case against treating problematisation as the default is stronger than the slogan suggests, part of it from the same evidence. Sandberg and Alvesson (2010) found gap spotting to be the most common move across paradigmatic camps. A move that dominates a field's published record is at least consistent with how that field accumulates rather than how it fails. Bartunek, Rynes and Ireland (2006) record that interestingness carries a cost against incremental rigour. Whetten (1989) with Sutton and Staw (1995) bound the promise further. A question that only restates the factors and their relations is a refinement, whatever move produced it. Bacharach (1989) and Wacker (1998) supply the criteria a problematised question can itself fail. Naming an assumption and denying it may yield a provocation that is neither bounded nor falsifiable.

Nothing in the reviewed literature settles the dispute, because no study has matched the move to the outcome. What would settle it is a design rather than another position paper. A study could classify a cohort of proposals by the move their authors name, then follow them to completion. It would record whether the problematising proposals proved more feasible and how examiners judged them. A sharper test would hold the topic constant. It would give reviewers two versions of the same proposal, one built on a gap and one on a challenged assumption, matched for feasibility and method. Until that exists, the claim that problematisation is stronger remains an argument with good reasons and no direct evidence.

Read by kind, the two sides rest on unequal evidence. The case for problematisation rests on one typology of 52 published articles, one conceptual methodology and one grounded theory of how authors position work. The case against rests on the same typology, where the dominance of gap spotting is the finding, together with one editorial argument and two sets of criteria a question can fail. A count of published moves is not an outcome. While the dispute is open, a student should name the move in the proposal, state what would falsify the competing assumption, and keep a fallback to gap spotting. The strongest objection is that the unit's preference outruns its source, since Sandberg and Alvesson (2010) claimed the convention rather than the outcome.

Where the argument is heading

Alvesson and Sandberg (2011) set out problematisation as a method rather than an attitude. Corley and Gioia (2011) replaced the binary question of whether work is theoretical with two dimensions. Rocco and Plakhotnik (2009) show that reviews, frameworks and questions are still conflated. A proposal is increasingly asked not what it studies but what it argues against.

The sources this unit rests on

Each note states what the work did, what it found and how it bears on the argument. Every identifier was resolved on 31 October 2026.

• Sandberg, J. and Alvesson, M. (2010). Ways of constructing research questions: gap-spotting or problematization? Organization. doi:10.1177/1350508410372151 Reviewed 52 articles in organisation studies and found gap spotting to be the most common way researchers construct questions across paradigmatic camps. The authors record that dominance as surprising, since theory becomes influential by challenging assumptions.
• Alvesson, M. and Sandberg, J. (2011). Generating research questions through problematization. Academy of Management Review. doi:10.5465/amr.2009.0188 Proposes problematisation as a methodology for identifying and challenging the assumptions underlying a literature, generating questions from a competing assumption rather than an absence. It argues that established routes yield technically new but theoretically uninteresting questions.
• Locke, K. and Golden-Biddle, K. (1997). Constructing opportunities for contribution: structuring intertextual coherence and problematizing in organizational studies. Academy of Management Journal. doi:10.2307/256926 Analysed published organisation studies articles to build a grounded theory of how authors construct an opportunity for contribution, first building coherence with prior work and then problematising it. Contribution is made in the writing rather than found in a topic.
• Davis, M. S. (1971). That's interesting! Philosophy of the Social Sciences. doi:10.1177/004839317100100211 Examined famous social theories and concluded that interesting theories deny an assumption of their audience while non-interesting theories affirm one. Interestingness is therefore a relation between a claim and an audience's assumptions.
• Bartunek, J. M., Rynes, S. L. and Ireland, R. D. (2006). What makes management research interesting, and why does it matter? Academy of Management Journal. doi:10.5465/amj.2006.20785494 Takes up Davis in an editorial, examining why interestingness matters and setting it against the pull of incremental rigour. It shows interestingness contested in practice rather than settled.
• Whetten, D. A. (1989). What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review. doi:10.2307/258554 Sets out the ingredients a reviewer looks for: the factors, the relationships among them, and the rationale explaining why those relationships hold, with only the third making a piece theoretical. Changing the first two alone is a refinement, which is the test the unit applies.
• Corley, K. G. and Gioia, D. A. (2011). Building theory about theory building: what constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review. doi:10.5465/amr.2011.55662499 Revisits Whetten and argues that a contribution varies in originality, from incremental to revelatory, and in utility, from scientific to practical, so the question is not whether work is theoretical but where it sits.
• Sutton, R. I. and Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly. doi:10.2307/2393788 Argues that references, data, variables, diagrams and hypotheses are not theory, though each is routinely used in place of it, and that theory supplies the connections among constructs and the logic for why an effect occurs. Naming a contribution is a claim about that logic.
• Bacharach, S. B. (1989). Organizational theories: some criteria for evaluation. Academy of Management Review. doi:10.2307/258555 Distinguishes description from theory and sets out criteria for the variables, constructs and relationships that compose one, including falsifiability and boundedness. It argues that much work called theoretical is descriptive.
• Wacker, J. G. (1998). A definition of theory: research guidelines for different theory-building research methods in operations management. Journal of Operations Management. doi:10.1016/s0272-6963(98)00019-9 Examines competing definitions and argues that theory must have conceptual definitions, domain limitations, relationship building and predictions. It is the audit a problematised question can still fail.
• Rocco, T. S. and Plakhotnik, M. S. (2009). Literature reviews, conceptual frameworks, and theoretical frameworks: terms, functions, and distinctions. Human Resource Development Review. doi:10.1177/1534484309332617 Distinguishes the literature review, the theoretical framework and the conceptual framework as separate manuscript components, finding the three routinely conflated, which weakens a proposal's argument. It carries the boundary between reviewing what is known and stating the framework in use.
• Bell, J. (1993). Doing your research project: a guide for first-time researchers in education and social science. Buckingham: Open University Press. https://archive.org/details/doingyourresearc0000bell_k8j5 A handbook guiding a first-time researcher from a topic through the literature to the reported study, treating the review as the activity through which the question is refined. It carries the unit's bridge from reading to question.
• Booth, W. C. (2003). The craft of research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://archive.org/details/craftofresearch02edboot A guide to research writing built around the claim that a project is organised by a question and a problem rather than a topic. It supplies the instrument for converting an interest into a specific answerable question.
• Maxwell, J. A. (1996). Qualitative research design: an interactive approach. Thousand Oaks: Sage. https://archive.org/details/qualitativeresea00maxw Sets out qualitative design as an interactive model in which purposes, conceptual framework, research questions, methods and validity constrain one another, with the question as the hinge. It carries the unit's claim that the question is the pivot of the design.