Purpose Statement: Why We Do What We Do? Part 04. The Lecture Series with Dr. Basu Prasad Subedi.

In this lecture, Dr. Basu Prasad Subedi, Assistant Professor at Kathmandu University School of Education and Research, discusses how to write a purpose statement after identifying the research gap in the statement of the problem. He emphasizes that the purpose statement should be based on the research gap and should guide the methodology. He explains that the choice of action verbs in the purpose statement indicates the research design: exploratory verbs like ’explore’ or ‘unfold’ suggest qualitative research, while verbs like ’examine’, ’test’, ‘relate’, or ‘associate’ indicate quantitative research. For mixed methods, both types of verbs are used. He advises keeping the purpose statement concise, typically a couple of sentences. He then explains the need to convert the purpose statement into research questions, clarifying that research questions are for the researcher, not for participants. He distinguishes between library-based and field-based research questions, emphasizing that most research requires field data. He also notes that quantitative research questions may lead to hypotheses, while qualitative ones do not. The lecture concludes with a preview of the next episode on delimiting the research.