Identifying Gap

Identifying a Gap
(or specific area of research)

In social science research, you are expected to extend or to challenge current knowledge, theories or assumptions.

How you do this will depend on your experience and seniority in the field.

At undergraduate level

this usually only involves originality of circumstance or situation (environment, population, and so on) rather than any actual theoretical innovation

but, you can still question the findings of other studies

At postgraduate research level

originality is a major requirement

the grounds for your study should emerge from the critical evaluation of other work in your field (In fact, an attempt to do this should be made in any primary research, whether at postgraduate or undergraduate level.)

Why do you need to identify a gap in the research?

It is important to establish what you have based your study on, offering both a logical and a social justification. This is what brings your work the respect and attention of others in the discipline.

To do this, you should:

acknowledge the work of others in the relevant research areas, and
justify your study in terms of a knowledge gap or a need for the research.

Establishing this gap is most usual way academics move from the general context of other research to the more specific context of their own study.

Look at this comment on scientific research

‘research papers make the transition from the general field or context of the study to the specific experiment by describing the inadequacy in previous research that motivates the present experiment’ (Hill et al., 1982: 335)

Language: How can you indicate a move from the general to a more specific context?

This move can be signaled in a range of ways. The most common is by using connectors of concession, such as:

however

while

but

yet

For example:

X shows Y; however, this may not be applicable in Hong Kong

While X shows Y, s/he fails to take account of Z

X shows Y, but fails to do Z

X shows Y, yet fails to do Z

Here is a good example from the field of language learning research.

The writer devotes a separate paragraph to creating her research space. Note the other ways we concede or admit points.

One process, however, that has been neglected in second language research is that of vocabulary building (Carter, 1987; Levenston, 1979; Meara, 1980, 1983). It is true that a number of significant studies have recently been done on how second language learners infer word meanings from context (Faerch, Haastrup and Phillipson, 1984; Haynes and Baker, in press; Palmberg, 1987), but the question of how those inferences help towards building up a native-like vocabulary has rarely been considered. Consequently, we have little basis, other than our own experience of what works, from which to develop an approach to the teaching and learning of words.
The process is, of course, a difficult one to examine.....

(Parry. Building a Vocabulary
through Academic Reading.
1991: 629-630)