What are five scholarly resources relevant to the topic of autism? What is a problem that needs to be solved or identify a gap in our knowledge that the research hopes to fill based on the topic of autism? What is a specific statement about your thesisthe assertion that you are making based on your theoretical and background knowledge? The statement of the problem leads to an assertion: "Based on what we know (theory and research findings), this is the expected answer (thesis). If this is so, these results will be obtained when subjected to experimentation (hypothesis)."