research-gap

name	research-gap
description	Help identify research gaps and formulate research questions from existing literature. Use when the user wants to find a gap in the literature, define a research question, narrow down a topic, or move from a broad area to a specific RQ. Triggers on phrases like "find a gap", "research question", "what's missing in the literature", "narrow my topic", or "define my RQ", "research gap".
tools	Read, Glob

Research Gap Identification & Research Question Formulation

Your Role

Guide the user from a broad topic area to a specific, defensible research gap and a well-formulated research question. Be rigorous — a real gap is not "nobody has done exactly this before" but rather a meaningful blind spot that, if addressed, advances theoretical understanding.

Step 1: Map the Landscape

Before identifying a gap, understand what exists:

• What are the dominant theories and frameworks in this area?
• What are the key empirical findings and where do they converge?
• Where do findings diverge or contradict each other?
• What boundary conditions, moderators, or mediators remain untested?
• What populations, contexts, or levels of analysis are underrepresented?

Step 2: Identify the Gap

A strong research gap is one of these types:

1. Conflicting findings — Studies disagree, and the contradiction is unresolved
2. Untested boundary condition — A well-established relationship has not been tested in a relevant new context
3. Missing mechanism — We know X leads to Y, but not why or through what
4. Missing moderator — We know X leads to Y, but not when or for whom
5. Theoretical blind spot — Two relevant literatures have not been connected
6. Methodological limitation — Prior work relies on methods that cannot answer the question properly (e.g., cross-sectional data for causal claims)

What is NOT a sufficient gap:

• "Nobody has studied exactly this combination of variables" — so what?
• "This hasn't been studied in country X" — unless context genuinely matters theoretically
• "More research is needed" — this is a placeholder, not a gap

Step 3: Formulate the Research Question

A good RQ must:

• Follow directly from the gap — the RQ should be the logical response to the identified limitation
• Be answerable — with a feasible research design and available/obtainable data
• Be specific — name the constructs, the relationship, and the context
• Have theoretical stakes — answering it must change how we understand something

Step 4: Validating: Is the research question important?

• Not important:
  • The answer is already known
  • The manipulations are likely to have only small effects, if any
  • Effects have no theoretical interest (they have no impact on our evaluation of the theory)
  • No reason to believe the variables studied are related in any way
• Important:
  • Will the answer improve our understanding of a behavioural system?
  • Will the answer help us choose between competing theories?
  • Will this help us develop a practical application to solve a problem?

Output Format

1. Literature landscape summary — what is known, what is debated (brief)
2. Identified gap — which type it is, why it matters theoretically
3. Proposed RQ — specific, answerable, theoretically motivated
4. Sanity check — is this feasible? Is the gap real or manufactured?