A Philippine statement of the problem is two things stacked: one general statement that names the whole study in a single sentence, and beneath it a numbered list of specific questions that the study will actually answer one at a time. Advice about it is easy to find. Complete examples are not, which is why most groups write theirs by copying the shape of last year’s thesis and hoping. Below are eight full statements of the problem, one per course, each written out the way it would appear in Chapter 1.
The shape a panel expects
Before the examples, the four rules that decide whether yours survives a title defence.
- The general statement mirrors the title. If your title names three variables, the general statement names the same three, in the same order, for the same population and locale.
- Specific questions are numbered and countable. Four to six is normal for an undergraduate thesis. Each one is a single question, never two joined by “and”.
- Question 1 is almost always the respondent profile. It is the one whose answer is a frequency and percentage table, and it exists because Chapter 4 needs it.
- Every question has a test waiting for it. A question you cannot answer with a tool named in your statistical treatment section is a question you cannot answer at all.
That last rule is the one panels enforce hardest, and it is why a statement of the problem written before the methodology is settled almost always has to be rewritten. Keep the statistical treatment decision table open while you draft.
Eight statements of the problem, written out
Each example below uses a fictional but plausible locale. Swap in your own population, place and academic year, and keep the sentence architecture.
1. BSBA, marketing management
General statement. This study sought to determine the relationship between social media marketing practices and customer purchase intention among micro and small enterprises in Lucena City for the academic year 2026-2027.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, highest educational attainment and length of patronage?
- What is the level of social media marketing practice of the enterprises as perceived by the respondents in terms of content frequency, responsiveness and promotional offers?
- What is the level of customer purchase intention among the respondents?
- Is there a significant relationship between the level of social media marketing practice and the level of customer purchase intention?
- Is there a significant difference in purchase intention when respondents are grouped according to profile?
Tests implied: frequency and percentage for 1, weighted mean for 2 and 3, Pearson r for 4, t-test or one-way ANOVA for 5.
2. BSN, nursing
General statement. This study sought to determine the level of knowledge and the practice of standard precautions among staff nurses in a selected tertiary hospital in Bacolod City, and the relationship between them.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, length of service and area of assignment?
- What is the level of knowledge of standard precautions among the respondents?
- What is the level of practice of standard precautions among the respondents?
- Is there a significant relationship between the level of knowledge and the level of practice?
- Is there a significant difference in the level of practice when respondents are grouped according to area of assignment?
Tests implied: frequency and percentage, weighted mean, Pearson r or Spearman rho, one-way ANOVA.
3. BEEd or BSEd, education
General statement. This study sought to determine the relationship between the reading intervention strategies used by Grade 3 teachers and the oral reading performance of their pupils in a selected public school district in Nueva Ecija.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the teacher respondents in terms of age, sex, years in service and relevant training attended?
- What is the extent of use of reading intervention strategies in terms of phonics instruction, guided oral reading and vocabulary building?
- What is the oral reading performance level of the pupils?
- Is there a significant relationship between the extent of use of the strategies and pupil oral reading performance?
- What reading support programme may be proposed based on the findings?
Note: question 5 is the output question, and education theses very often carry one. It has no statistical test; it is answered by the proposal in Chapter 5.
4. BS Criminology
General statement. This study sought to determine the level of implementation of barangay anti-drug abuse council programmes and the level of community participation in them in a selected municipality in Batangas.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, civil status and length of residency?
- What is the level of implementation of the council’s programmes in terms of advocacy, rehabilitation referral and monitoring?
- What is the level of community participation in the same programmes?
- Is there a significant relationship between the level of implementation and the level of community participation?
- What problems do the respondents encounter in participating in the programmes?
Which design this implies, and which sampling technique goes with it, is worked out in the piece on criminology research designs.
5. BSIT or BSCS, capstone
General statement. This study sought to design, develop and evaluate a web-based inventory and sales monitoring system for a selected hardware retailer in Tagbilaran City.
Specific questions.
- What are the problems encountered in the existing manual inventory and sales recording process?
- What features should the proposed system have to address the identified problems?
- How may the developed system be evaluated by the intended users in terms of functional suitability, usability, performance efficiency and reliability?
- Is there a significant difference in the evaluation ratings given by the two respondent groups?
Note: the evaluation criteria in question 3 must be the ones your instrument actually measures. Which framework to pick is settled in the comparison of ISO 25010, SUS and TAM.
6. BSHM or BSTM, hospitality and tourism
General statement. This study sought to determine the relationship between perceived service quality and guest satisfaction in selected beach resorts in Iloilo Province.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the guest respondents in terms of age, sex, origin of travel and frequency of visit?
- What is the perceived level of service quality in terms of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy?
- What is the level of guest satisfaction?
- Is there a significant relationship between perceived service quality and guest satisfaction?
- Is there a significant difference in perceived service quality when respondents are grouped according to frequency of visit?
7. BSA, accountancy
General statement. This study sought to determine the extent of adoption of internal control practices and its relationship with the perceived reliability of financial reporting among micro and small enterprises in Cagayan de Oro City.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the enterprises in terms of years in operation, number of employees and nature of business?
- What is the extent of adoption of internal control practices in terms of control environment, control activities and monitoring?
- What is the perceived level of reliability of financial reporting?
- Is there a significant relationship between the extent of adoption of internal control practices and the perceived reliability of financial reporting?
- Is there a significant difference in the extent of adoption when enterprises are grouped according to profile?
Which of the four candidate tests question 5 needs is decided in the piece on statistical treatment for a BSA thesis.
8. AB or BS Psychology
General statement. This study sought to determine the relationship between perceived academic stress and sleep quality among third-year and fourth-year college students in a selected university in Davao City.
Specific questions.
- What is the profile of the respondents in terms of age, sex, year level and programme?
- What is the level of perceived academic stress among the respondents?
- What is the level of sleep quality among the respondents?
- Is there a significant relationship between perceived academic stress and sleep quality?
- Is there a significant difference in perceived academic stress when respondents are grouped according to year level?
Caution: questions 2 and 3 commit you to published scales, not to a questionnaire you write yourself, and scales carry licence terms. Settle that before the proposal defence, not after.
The fill-in template
Strip any of the eight and this is what remains. It works for the great majority of descriptive-correlational undergraduate studies.
This study sought to determine [the relationship between / the level of] [variable 1] and [variable 2] among [respondents] in [locale] for [academic year or period].
Specifically, it sought to answer the following questions:
1. What is the profile of the respondents in terms of [three or four attributes you will actually use later]?
2. What is the level of [variable 1] in terms of [its dimensions]?
3. What is the level of [variable 2]?
4. Is there a significant relationship between [variable 1] and [variable 2]?
5. Is there a significant difference in [variable 1 or 2] when the respondents are grouped according to [one profile attribute]?
Two words in that template are doing quiet work. Significant commits you to a statistical test and therefore to hypotheses. And in terms of commits you to dimensions that must reappear as named parts of your questionnaire. Neither is decoration.
The five faults that send it back
- A question with no test behind it. “What are the effects of social media on students?” cannot be answered by any tool in an undergraduate methodology. Rewrite it as a relationship or a level.
- Profile attributes that never return. If you ask for civil status in question 1 and never group by it in question 5 or in Chapter 4, a panellist will ask why you collected it. Collect only what you will use.
- Two questions wearing one number. “What is the level of stress and how do students cope with it?” is two studies. Split it or drop one.
- A general statement wider than the title. If the title says one city and the general statement says the province, the scope is already wrong and your title page will be reprinted.
- Variables that change name between sections. “Social media marketing practices” in the statement of the problem must not become “online promotion strategies” in Chapter 3. Fix the wording once and use it everywhere.
Fault 4 is the most expensive because it is usually caught at title defence rather than during writing. If a title has already come back to you, the four fixable faults are diagnosed in the piece on getting a rejected title approved.
The alignment check
Before you show the statement of the problem to your adviser, build this grid. It takes ten minutes and it removes most of what a panel would otherwise find.
| Question | Instrument part that answers it | Statistical tool | Chapter 4 table |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Profile | Part I | Frequency, percentage | Table 1 |
| 2. Level of variable 1 | Part II, items 1 to 15 | Weighted mean | Table 2 |
| 3. Level of variable 2 | Part III, items 16 to 25 | Weighted mean | Table 3 |
| 4. Relationship | Parts II and III | Pearson r | Table 4 |
| 5. Difference by group | Part I and Part II | t-test or ANOVA | Table 5 |
A blank in the second column means a question your questionnaire cannot answer. A blank in the third means a question your methodology cannot answer. Either way, the question changes now rather than in April. The same grid, extended, becomes the backbone of Chapter 3, and it is the reason the two chapters agree with each other.
Where the statement of the problem sits among the other Chapter 1 sections, and what comes before and after it, is set out in the guide to writing Chapter 1 section by section.
Get the statement drafted this week
A statement of the problem is short, which makes it feel like it should be quick. It is not, because it is the sentence every later chapter has to agree with. Tesify takes your title, your variables and your respondents and drafts the general statement and the numbered specific questions with the alignment already in place, so what you take to your adviser is something to correct rather than something to invent. The research and the argument stay entirely yours.
Draft your statement of the problem free on Tesify
Frequently asked questions
How many specific questions should a thesis have?
Four to six for an undergraduate thesis. Fewer than four usually means the study is thin; more than six usually means two studies have been merged, and the panel will ask you to drop one.
Should the specific questions be questions or statements?
Most Philippine manuals ask for questions in the statement of the problem and for the same content restated as objectives. If yours asks for both, write the questions first and convert them; the wording must match one to one.
Does every specific question need a hypothesis?
No. Only the questions that test a relationship or a difference carry hypotheses. Profile and level questions are descriptive and need none. Writing a hypothesis for a descriptive question is a common and easily spotted error.
Can a qualitative thesis use this format?
The stacked structure holds, but the questions change character. They ask how and why rather than how much, they are usually three or four rather than five, and there is no statistical tool column in the alignment grid; the questions map to interview guide sections instead.
Where does the statement of the problem go in Chapter 1?
Directly after the background of the study in almost every Philippine manual, and before the hypotheses, the significance and the scope. Your own manual has the binding order.
What tense should it be written in?
Most Philippine manuscripts use the past tense in the final copy, since the study has been completed by the time it is bound. Proposals are often written in the future or present. Check your manual and stay consistent.
Can I change the specific questions after the proposal defence?
Small wording changes are routine. Adding or removing a question changes the instrument and the statistical treatment, so it needs your adviser’s approval and, in many departments, the panel’s.
Does the general statement need a citation?
No. Citations belong in the background of the study, which is where the problem is evidenced. The general statement is your own declaration of what the study did.
My adviser says my questions are too broad. What do I actually change?
Narrow the population, the locale or the period, in that order. “Students” becomes “third-year and fourth-year students”; “the Philippines” becomes one city; “in recent years” becomes one academic year. Each narrowing also makes the sampling defensible.
Should question 1 always be the profile?
In a descriptive-correlational study, almost always, because Chapter 4 opens with the profile table. A purely experimental or purely documentary study may not need one at all.