Özet:

Research assistants are the people who will increase the quality of higher education as future academic members, so research assistants should be educated as successful researchers and educators. It is important that the research assistants trying to gain these abilities during their post-graduate education should be supported and given a proper consultation. The aim of this research is to define the difficulties of research assistants during the identification of a research problem. At this point, interviews were carried out with 12 research assistants in different departments of 3 universities in Ankara. The research is conducted by a basic interpretive design which is a type of qualitative research. The research design is qualitative phenomenological research. According to the findings, it has been observed that most of the research assistants have difficulty in defining a research problem and they need consulting as to whether their research problems fit the criteria. They mentioned that they sometimes choose an academic member according to the problem, when defining a problem. Academic members sometimes tell them which research problem they should research. When defining a research problem, research assistants especially pay attention to factors such as originality, practicality, interest, ethical suitability, time-substructure suitability, contemporary problems, contributing to the field, having sufficient knowledge, interdisciplinarity, materiality, accessibility, and relativity to the field. Also, they avoid researching some problems such as policy and sexuality. According to the results of the study, it is seen that the research assistants mostly have difficulties in determining the problem. In this case, it may be suggested that especially the supervisors should be guides and supportive in every aspect of the study rather than forcing them to choose the problem that they want.

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