FIRST STEPS IN THE CONDUCT OF INOUIRY

First steps in the conduct of inguiry are the focus of this statement.

Help through the first stages of getting research started is the concern.

The Original Impetus and Primary Focus

The original impetus was recognition many years ago that undergraduate
and graduate students, young faculty members, staff people in business and
government, even consulting and advisory people freguently seemed confounded
in their efforts to get started on problem finding and problem solving.

Closer observation suggested more difficulty with problem finding than
with problem solving. For a time, my own hunch was that some people more than
others probably have a yen and a capacity for coping with poorly-structured
and ill-defined beginnings. This may be true, It may even be that such
people have less interest, even less talent for other facets.

Bit by bit, however, it also dawned that there was and we continue to
have available far more written on broad guestions of science and specific
rigors of hypothesis testing than on the middle and difficult stage of
developing theoretical foundations, guestions, problems and hypotheses in the
first place. It was then and after further experience in guiding research
efforts that I wondered whether it might be possible more effectively than
up to that point to extend the capacities and successes of larger numbers

of people,