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Social science research is rarely guided by the search for right or wrong answers. This is because many social science research questions analyze aspects of society that are not governed by rules and facts. While this can be daunting, developing a good research question can help your work stay focused and directed.
The process of developing a research question can be summarized in these five steps:
- Identify a Broad Interest: Begin by noting the observations you have about the social world that capture your attention. Projects fueled by passion tend to be more engaging.
- Consult Existing Research: To understand how your interests could become research topics, explore academic papers, literature reviews, and other relevant resources to see how previous researchers have explored them. As you do so, focus on how other researchers have connected theories to their qualitative or quantitative data.
- Identify a Gap in Knowledge: Unanswered or unresolved issues in previous research can give you good ideas of where to take your project. Would studying a particular group of people or a specific place add details that have been left out of earlier work? How would a different method contribute new data or analyses?
- Narrow Down to a Specific Topic: Turning your interests into a manageable topic means identifying what you can research with the data that you will be able to collect with the time and resources that are available to you.
- Write your Research Question: Your research question will be a statement that ends with a question mark. It should be answerable with the data you use and connect to the theoretical perspectives that have guided previous explorations of your topic and interest.
While following these steps may not be as linear as solving a mathematical equation or investigating a natural phenomenon, you can use the steps above as a guide for developing your research question in an efficient and effective manner. In general, your data will get better as your question becomes more focused, the methods are firmly decided, and results are more precise: the clearer your vision becomes, the better your project!
