抄録
This study investigated how scientists' backgrounds constrained their processes of problem formulation, that is the processes of representing an ill-defined problem as a more specific one. We provided various active scientists with an ill-defined theme and asked them to form a specific research plan which was related to the given theme. The coding of their protocol data showed that the processes of their problem formulation could be classified into five types. Then we compared four of the five types with the scientists' backgrounds which consist of their major research fields, journal enterprises, research goals, and available research methods. We found, as a result, inconsistency in the correspondence between the four types of formulation and their research fields/submitted journals which have been considered by researchers on social studies of science to be representative of the characteristics of scientific studies. On the other hand, we found consistency in the correspondence between the formulation types and their “background constructed by their research orientation” in their previous studies, which consists of two factors: research goals and available research methods. This background, that is, their research orientation is considered to be constructed by validation boundary of each journal enterprise. We propose, therefore, “background constructed by their research orientation”, as the representative of the characteristics of scientists' cognitive activities in problem formulation.
