3.2 Factors Affecting Problem Identification

The four clusters (the exam's list): The researcher's own position: interest and motivation (the long labour's fuel), competence (the method's skills — can the student run the statistical analysis, or is the doctrinal design the honest choice?), and access (the courts' permissions, the records' availability, the language of the sources); The subject-matter factors: the topic's researchability (specific, evidence-answerable), the data's availability (the records kept or not kept), the topic's scope (the province that fits the year, not the decade); The environment's factors: the relevance (the legal community's live debates), the novelty (the gap the literature leaves), the ethical acceptability (the vulnerable subjects, the permissions), the institutional requirements (the university's format, the supervisor's field); The practical constraints: time, finance, the sample's geography, the supervisor's and university's constraints.