Doctoral students and others preparing to conduct research have a lot to learn when developing the first of the hopefully many studies they will conduct in their lives. Often, they have only one course in which to learn all of the basics of conceptualization and construction of those studies. As a research course instructor, helping students understand the basics as quickly and thoroughly as possible can make the difference between your success and failure in teaching them all they need. It can also help students have greater success in future classes where they will build on skills that, without this aid, they may not have learned as well as needed. This booklet discusses the nature of types of problem statements, how to identify them, and how they relate to purpose statements in succinct, user-friendly detail. It discusses the nature of and alignment of purpose and framework, as well as how to change designs between quantitative and qualitative study designs. It can be a useful tool in your instructional arsenal.