NB: THIS GUIDELINE IS AN EXCERPT FROM A DOCUMENT

PRODUCED FOR CCG AND TOURISM STUDENTS AT AAU,

BUT CAN STILL BE VERY USEFUL FOR SEMESTER
PROJECTS AT GRS

3. Elements that constitute a project

Figure 3.1 outlines the elements of what can be termed a ‘classic’ project. All
projects should include these elements, but you can adjust them to fit your project; for
example, by changing the sequence or merging them. In the following sections, each
element is described in greater depth.

Introduction Problem formulation:

Fig. 3.1: Components of the project report
- What is the problem this project seeks to investigate/explore?
- Why do you consider this a relevant/interesting/important
problem?

Methodology Research strategy, methods of data collection and analysis:

- How did you approach and investigate/explore this problem?

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 - What ontological and epistemological assumptions underpin your
project?
- Why did you choose this particular research design (incl. particular
kinds of sources and data)?
- How did you analyse the data?
- What ethical considerations are relevant for your project and how
have you addressed them?

Literature review Presentation and overview of central sources in relation to your particular
problem (books, scholarly articles etc.) -- including critical evaluation and
explanation of how your study relates to the field of research.

Theory Presentation and critical discussion of theories and concepts relevant to the
identified problem.

Analysis Possibly descriptive parts, but mainly critical use/interpretation/discussion

of data, sources and arguments. Make sure to use any theory actively in your
analysis.

Conclusion Answering research questions, coming to a conclusion in relation to your

problem formulation

List of references Works cited

3.1. Introduction and problem formulation

Every project should begin by introducing the topic and formulating the problem that the
project addresses. A project introduction should engage with such questions as: “What will
this project be about?”, and “Why is this a relevant and interesting problem to concern
oneself with in a project?” It is always a good idea to ‘set the scene’ before introducing and
formulating the actual problem. In this way, you provide the context that will enable you to
argue for the relevance of the problem, and provide the reader (your examiners) with the
necessary background to properly appreciate the arguments you make about its relevance.

Choosing a general topic to write about is usually easy. Having chosen that topic however,
you must then narrow down the focus of your topic to ‘distil’ your problem formulation. In
the following we will provide you with some of the basic tenets of problem formulation.

3.1.1. The good problem formulation

Defining and formulating a problem is essential to PBL-style project writing. A problem can
be defined as something which “grows out of students’ wondering”, and which is “the starting

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point directing the students’ learning process and situates the learning in a context” (Barge
2010). A ‘problem’ is thus the anchoring point, which directs the study, and which focuses
and frames the entire project.

It is important that you do not think of a problem only as something that is not working, or is
in need of fixing. Blaikie & Priest (2019) distinguish between a social problem (a state of affairs
that is judged by someone to be unsatisfactory and requiring intervention), and research
problems, which are intellectual puzzles that need to be explained or better understood.
Thus, a problem can be an issue that has not yet been fully explored or understood, something
about which we seem to have insufficient knowledge or something which is unclear, under-
investigated or perhaps controversial. Basing your problem formulation on puzzlement or
curiosity is an excellent way to avoid the pitfalls of an unfocussed, irrelevant problem, or one
that lends itself only to descriptive rather than critical analysis.

The problem formulation normally takes the form of a few short paragraphs, or one or more
questions. It may include references to academic literature or previous research, but could
also draw on non-academic sources such as official statistics or newspaper articles.

Example 1: “This project sets out to explore the role of differing cultural self-perceptions in
the representation of two famous UNESCO heritage sites: Kronborg Castle in Denmark and
Taj Mahal in India. It seeks to understand the cultural interests at play, and how local site
managers attempt to cope with a diversity of culturally based expectations and
interpretations.”

Example 2: “The first purpose of our project is to understand the courses and the nature of
nationalism in ‘stateless’ nations within the European Union. In order to explore this
phenomenon, we are going to use recent manifestations of Scottish and Catalan nationalism
as cases in a comparative study. The next purpose is to assert the impact of such movements
on European (EU) collective identity-building in the future.”

You need to ensure coherence throughout the project from the introduction (where the
problem formulation is placed) to the conclusion. To achieve this, you must start out with a
doable and manageable research problem before you get into any detailed considerations
about methodology, theory or analysis. It is important that you formulate your problem
before developing the project outline. It does not necessarily have to be formulated explicitly
as one or more questions, but might read something like “This project sets out to explore the
causes of … Furthermore, it aims to…” It is, however, often helpful to use research questions,
because they help ensure that your project is focused on specific issues rather than a very
broad or unmanageable topic. “What are the cultural interests at play, and how do local site
managers cope with a diversity of culturally based expectations?”

Test your own first drafts against this list of qualities that characterise a good problem
formulation:

• Is ’curious’; it seeks to explore a ’problem’ (not aimed simply at describing or giving an

account of a phenomenon)

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• Is original (rather than copying what has been done before)

• Is academic (as opposed to common sense, non-theoretical)

• Is relevant

• Is properly contextualised

• Has a clear focus; is written in precise language, formulated in a few lines

• Is open (not calling for a simple ’yes’ or ’no’ answer)

• Is possible to answer

• Is properly reflecting the project and, eventually, its conclusions.

Finally, remember that problem formulations will probably evolve during the project. If,
during the course of analysing, discussing, etc., you realise that what you really wish to
investigate is not exactly what you formulated during the initial stages of your project, then
go back and improve your problem formulation by revising it – re-creating alignment between
all elements in your project.

3.2. Methodology

During the course of your studies at CCG or Tourism you will be equipped with a host of
methodological and theoretical tools that will enable you to produce context or case specific
research designs and to apply relevant methods in your project work. In what follows, we will
briefly sketch out the purpose of methodology and provide you with some useful general
pieces of advice, and then simply emphasise the importance of attending methods and
methodology courses offered in your programme, in order to develop your skills in practical
application in your projects.

The purpose of the methodology chapter or section is to introduce the ‘toolkit’ of your project
and explain the choices made in regard to selecting and applying them. This means you should
be reflecting on what you do, how you do it, and why you do it. There are important reasons
for including thorough considerations about all elements you include in your project. As
regards methodology:

Firstly, you should never rely on chance or luck in choosing your methods for collecting or
analysing your data/source material. Instead, you must think critically and thoroughly about
the optimal research strategy and design for exactly the problem that you have formulated.

Secondly, methodological skills are transferable skills: if you can get it right in your projects,
you are likely to carry those competences with you and ‘nail’ methodology in assignments
that you will encounter in your professional lives later on also. So, think of methodology in
projects not as something that you must include because the programme regulations require

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it, but (like sections on e.g., theory and analysis) as something that will increase your ability
to produce high quality work later on in your professional life.

Thirdly, through a well-described, justified and transparent methodological approach to your

project problem you will be able to document the quality of your work and the validity of your
findings to those who will later be assessing them. If you can’t illustrate convincingly why your
analyses turned out as they did, the examiners can’t give you proper credit for your work.

You may encounter differences in terminology as you discuss these issues with your
supervisors, but usually ‘methodology’ and ‘methods’ refer to different things. Methodology
is concerned with the ‘tool kit’ of your project – what can such a tool kit help build, what are
its strengths and weaknesses, what does it entail in terms of knowledge creation etc. As a
more general term, it is concerned with approach and design. Your methodology section
should present your methods, but also, importantly, explain the choice and use of these
methods. Thus, it is essential that you do not only describe which methods you will apply but
also why you picked these particular tools from the tool kit.

As the practical content of the tool kit, methods will enable you to move forward in your data
and material collection process. They might be, e.g., methods for data collection -- such as
questionnaires and other kinds of surveys, participant observation, interviews, social or mass
media output harvesting, or archival work -- or methods for data analysis, such as content
analysis, critical document analysis, discourse analysis.

In sum, the questions that should occupy your mind when thinking methodologically are: with
this particular problem formulation, which design and method(s) can help me carry out high-
quality data collection and analysis? What is it that makes this particular design/these
methods optimal?

Other considerations to include in this chapter are limitations of the research design you have
chosen (what will you not be able to conclude on, that might otherwise seem obviously
relevant?), as well as your epistemological and/or ontological point of departure, when
relevant.

It is common to include a separate chapter in projects entitled ‘Methodology’ or ‘Research

design’ or something else that properly describes such considerations. However, at times you
may find that separating methodological considerations from other considerations about e.g.,
theory seems almost impossible and artificial. Ideally, your methodological considerations
should be with you throughout all parts of the project and not just something stated in a
separate chapter on methodology.

You probably grow wiser as your work progresses and you realise that the design and the
method(s) you first thought would be useful for exploring your problem, turn out less than
optimal. In many cases it is possible to ‘repair’ the project. So, don’t think you must
necessarily proceed as initially set out. Unless your data has already been collected or there
is another impediment, it might still be possible to go back and revise this chapter on the basis
of the new knowledge you can now use as the foundation for an improved methodology.

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Thus, again, re-establishing alignment between what you say you will be doing and what you
actually do.

Finally, it must be emphasized that critical analysis is also ethical analysis. You have certain
responsibilities in relation to the people who are involved in your project, such as external
partners, interviewees, participants of the interaction that you observe, etc. These
responsibilities entail protecting the privacy of the people who have shared their viewpoints
and experiences, and entrusted their personal information to you in the course of the project.
You must respect their wishes with regard to participation in your project.

For updated information about data protection (GDPR), please visit this site:
https://www.studerende.aau.dk/gdpr/gdpr_english/.

3.3 Literature review

The purpose of the literature review is to link your problem formulation and research
questions to what is already known about the topic and how it has been studied previously,
including current gaps in knowledge, and what theories are relevant. In your literature review
you should therefore discuss the findings of other researchers, and set out the academic
debates about your topic. You should also discuss theories and concepts from the existing
literature, and how they will be understood within the framework of your project. Finally, you
may consider how your project might potentially develop, support, challenge existing
literature on the topic.

It is important to distinguish between ‘theory’ and ’literature review’, even if these might be
combined in one or more chapters of your project report. Searching for, reading and thinking
about the central, state-of-the-art scholarly texts relevant to your problem is an important
part of choosing an appropriate theoretical framework for your project, and a comprehensive
account of these texts is often an essential part of telling your reader about the theoretical
position that you have chosen. Hence, it is on the basis of your literature review that you
choose the specific theories that are to serve as central tools in your analyses.

Try to avoid putting together a simple list that merely describes the work of others in the
form: “Smith found...”, “Jones concluded...”, “Anderson stated…”. Instead, try to build your
literature review as an argument allowing the scholars whose works you found relevant to
engage in a ‘dialogue’ with one another, e.g.: “As opposed to Smith, Anderson claims...”,
“Similarly to Jones, Smith’s argument contests...”.

3.4. Theory

In project work, examining a particular problem can be compared to looking at it through a

kaleidoscope. Every time the tube is turned, the colours and the shapes inside shift, thus
changing the shape and colour of the objects that the view sees. Theories are like a
kaleidoscope lens, providing different perspectives and ways of defining and understanding

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the problem that you investigate in your project. In this section of the guidelines, we shall try
to answer such questions as: ‘What is theory?’; ‘What role does theory play in the project
work?’; and ‘How do we choose an appropriate theoretical framework?’.

3.4.1. The purpose and practical use of theory

As a student you have certainly come across the term ‘theory’ numerous times. You have
probably encountered it in relation to quite concepts, such as ‘identity’ or ‘networks’. At the
same time, ‘theory’ is very likely to have been used at some point during your studies to
describe particular academic fields central to the study programs in which you are enrolled,
e.g.: ‘media theory’ or ‘marketing theory’. Finally, you might also have seen or heard it appear
in the context of complex philosophical models or scientific paradigms, such as a ‘theory of
phenomenology’.

The multiple meanings and ways in which ‘theory’ is applied in academic work can be
confusing. It can also make the task of actually using theories in your project seem somewhat
intimidating. Having clear ideas about why you need theories to write a project and what
theories consist of can help you overcome any initial uncertainty that you might feel in
relation to this part of the project work.

Theories provide you with a lens for looking at the issues that you have decided to tackle in
your project. Like the changing shapes and colours of the kaleidoscope, different theoretical
frameworks enable us to perceive and understand the world in a different ways. They indicate
which topics should be studied, what kinds of questions can be asked, and provide a particular
language – a set of concepts or propositions – that can be used to describe and provide
explanations of intellectual and practical problems.

Theories that are relevant to your problem will guide your inquiries into that same problem.
They will provide you with the language for talking about it and they might also give you some
ideas about what is yet unknown in relation to the problem at hand, and inspire you to
examine this unknown. Theory which is ‘appropriate’ to project would be the theory that
deals with the aspects of the issues or processes which are central to your problem. An
example to illustrate this: you are examining how race and ethnicity are constructed through
‘United Colours of Benetton’ advertisements and want to discuss this in relation to the notion
of ‘stereotypes’. Relevant phenomena to explore this further could be stereotyping, mass
media, identity construction, etc. Theories that might be useful for your project will thus
include, for instance, ‘identity theories’, ‘cultural theories’, ‘theories of intercultural
communication’, ‘media theories’ and ‘marketing theories’ -- depending on the more specific
questions that you have formulated in relation to your problem.

Theories organise specific terms for talking about the ideas and phenomena you are
interested in. This means that having chosen, read and thought about theories relevant to
your problem formulation, you will know what to search or look for in your material. Also,
you will know how to talk about it, and you will know how what you discover in the course of
your project might contribute to existing knowledge.

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When you write about theory, it is important to be critical. You might very well find more than
one theory that could explain your ‘problem’ and you will need to think about what these
theories include and exclude, what questions they were originally intended to answer, what
assumptions they make, and how other researchers have used them.

It is also important to emphasise again that the project writing process is rarely linear.
Developing a theoretical framework is a task which you may easily continue to work on
throughout the whole project. As you move along with your empirical work, with your analysis
and with the critical discussion of its results, you may discover that there are more sides to
your problem that you initially anticipated, and that the theories which you have found
appropriate in the beginning of your project work do not provide you with the concepts and
ways of explaining all of the interesting and new things that you uncovered in the course of
your analysis. In this case, go back to your theory chapter and revise it until it fits these new
needs.

3.5. Analysis

Analysis is at the heart of any project. When they assess your project, the examiners will pay
great attention to this part of your work. In both the CCG and Tourism programmes, great
emphasis is placed on your ability to develop and carry out critical analysis.

Generally, in academic work, taking a critical stance means recognising that ideas, meanings
and knowledge that might appear as ‘natural’, ‘given facts’ and universal ‘truths’ are in fact
socially, culturally and historically specific and constantly reconstructed and renegotiated
(Rapley, 2007, p. 4).

The questions that you might be asking yourself at this point are, “How do I ensure that my
analysis is critical?”, “How do I deal with my own role in studying these phenomena?”, etc.
There are a few basic principles to which you can adhere in developing critical analysis that
would be specific to your problem formulation and those theories and methods that you
apply in dealing with it.

• Your analysis and discussion of its results should be systematic. You can ensure this
by:

o Presenting explanations for every claim that you make, and clearly showing how
this new understanding is drawn from and clearly connects to your analysis;

o Considering viewpoints that support your arguments, as well as viewpoints that

contest them;

o Always returning to your problem formulation! You need to demonstrate clearly

and continuously throughout your analysis and discussion how whatever
questions you are asking and answering, whatever empirical work that you do,
whatever analytical steps that you are taking are relevant to the problem which
you are investigating. Make it clear how your analysis confirms your assumptions

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 about the field, answers the questions that you posed in the beginning of your
project, or contributes to understanding the processes that you were wondering
about, etc.

• Your analysis and discussion should be transparent. You can ensure this by:

o Explaining clearly why you chose to conduct the analysis in the way you did. That
is, you must tell the reader what your assumptions are; how you chose the
concepts which you use in discussing your analytical results; how the methods that
you have used affect the outcome of your investigation, etc. Thus, methodological
awareness should accompany you throughout your analysis.

o Setting up clear criteria for what makes your analysis credible. That is, you must
discuss how your material was collected, why certain sources and points of view
are presented, and why your conclusions are sound according to the paradigm
which you adhere to (is it trustworthy, valid, reliable, possibly generalizable, etc.)
(see also Silverman, 2000). Basically, you need to make clear why the analysis you
are carrying out is relevant and why we should trust the conclusions that you draw
on the basis of it.

Please note that in these guidelines we address the issues of critical analysis and critical
discussion together. In short, the difference can be seen as one between a) detailed
examination of data or sources in order to improve your understanding of a phenomenon
(analysis), and (b) assessment of/conversation about the results of the analysis in relation to
your problem formulation or research questions, as well as theory and previous research
(discussion). While these elements of the project will always be tightly intertwined, the
method of your analysis might require you to make a more explicit distinction between these
aspects of your project. It might sometimes be useful to make a separate ‘Discussion’ chapter
in your written project report.

3.6. Conclusion

In your conclusion you must summarise your findings in order to address all aspects of the
problem(s) you set out to investigate. If you expressed your problem in the form of research
questions, then your conclusion should provide an answer to them. Make sure to include all
relevant aspects, and do not assume that your reader/examiner will remember them from
the analyses above.

During the course of your project writing, your analyses may have dictated a change of focus
or methodology, so that your conclusions no longer ‘match’ your problem formulation. This
can be dealt with in different ways. One is to go back and revise your problem formulation so
that there is once again a clear connection between it and your conclusion. In such a process,
however, you must carefully ensure that all the various sections remain aligned and
interrelated throughout the project. Alternatively, you may choose to openly address the fact
that you are unable to conclude in the manner and to the extent that you originally thought

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you would be. While such an approach might be seen as an acknowledgement of ‘research
gone wrong’, it can also be seen as a way to deal with the social as a complex and non-
coherent entity which does not always add up and which cannot always be researched and
made known to us using the methods and tools at our disposal. Hence, ‘failing’ in the research
process can also be used as an occasion to reflect on ontological and epistemological issues
of great interest. Also, it is much better than attempting to ‘twist’ conclusions to fit problem
formulations, when this cannot be successfully achieved. In fact, your examiners are likely to
give you credit for identifying and acknowledging flaws that you are unable to correct. If at all
possible, make sure problem formulation, content of the project and conclusion are aligned.

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