What Makes a Good Research Question?: Week 1 Program Transcript

What Makes a Good Research Question?: Week 1 Program Transcript

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DR. ANNIE PEZALLA: A good research question sets the stage for how the methods and procedures of the study unfold, but first, a brief digression. What makes a question a research question? This is a stumbling block for most novice researchers, particularly those who are driven by a passion or an interest, or who see a profound social need, but they haven’t yet connected their passion to the scholarly community. We have a variety of tips for you here.

First, connect with your passion. Your intrinsic motivation for your interest in this topic should be very clear. Why do you want to study this topic or issue? What do you want to clarify? Is there a policy you want to change or a social need you want to contribute to? And what makes your study worth the effort? Who will care about the results? Focus in on that.

Second, connect with the scholarly literature. New research is compelled by what is known, not known, or conflicted in an existing body of scholarly literature. So your next step is to read, read, read good scholarly work in your topic area.

Literature reviews and meta-analyses on your topic are very efficient ways to dive into a potential topic area. The authors summarize, sometimes descriptively or statistically, the literature from the publication date back through a specific time frame, and they point out research consistencies and inconsistencies. And there’s usually a section at the end that points out what kinds of studies are needed to move the knowledge base forward. Focus in on that.

Third, develop your research problem and clearly identify A, a phenomenon of interest. This could be the concept or the experience that we want our research to understand and describe. Examples include social activism, isolation, or job satisfaction. B, a group, organization, or an individual that directly experiences this phenomenon– and C, the scholarly literature that clearly points out that more research is needed on the phenomenon in question.

Fourth, evolve your research purpose from your research problem. If you’ve done well to this point, the research purpose becomes obvious, and you can use this template to structure the words, something like, the purpose of this qualitative research is to explore, or describe, or understand the phenomenon of interest in the group or organization or individual that experiences it.

Last, let your qualitative research question emerge. Your research purpose becomes your central research question. That’s how does this group, organization, or individual who experiences this phenomenon describe or

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What Makes a Good Research Question?: Week 1

experience or understand the phenomenon of interest? That’s your central research question.

Usually, one broad, open-ended question will suffice, but you might discover that there may be a dimension of the central question that you’d like to explore further, so you can include sub-questions as well.

Thus, the goodness of your research question depends on how well you or the researcher in an article that you’re reading align the research problem and the research purpose.

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What Makes a Good Research Question?: Week 1 Additional Content Attribution

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