https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ask-who-what-how-why-where-1328351/
One of the best ways to form a research question for your project is to learn by example. Looking carefully at how other researchers have narrowed their research interest down into a realistic and answerable question can guide you. It can be particularly helpful to look at the work of researchers in similar fields or disciplines, as they will likely use a process similar to your own.
Let’s take a look at some examples that we curated from more experienced researchers in a variety of disciplines:
How do the Iroquois peoples articulate and maintain political sovereignty through the refusal of both American and Canadian citizenships?
- Discipline: Anthropology
- This question is one of the research questions that motivated Audura Simpson’s ethnographic work Mohawk Interrupts: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (2014).
Do exposure to natural environments or photographs of natural environments, promote a more positive body image?
- Discipline: Psychology
- Sawmi and colleagues (2018) used an experimental design to study this question. Participants were exposed to actual natural environments or to photos of them. Their self-reported body image before and after the exposure, measured through a scale called the State Body Appreciation Scale-2 (Homan 2016) is analyzed quantitatively.
How did disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic create conflicts for couples with young children?
- Discipline: Sociology
- Calarco and colleagues (2020) used a mixed methods approach that involved surveys, diary entries, and in-depth interviews to study this question. They used the qualitative data from diaries and interviews to understand the causes and consequences of conflicts among the couples.
While these are great examples of well-devised and relevant research questions, they do not reveal much about the actual process of research. To gain an inside perspective on how a research question can guide a research project, let’s take a look at the following report of a research project. The researchers set out to investigate the question, “In what ways is the current political climate impacting immigrant family K-8 students and their families?”
Take a look at the above report that provides an overview of the impact of current immigration policies upon K8 students in Gonzales, CA. Using the knowledge you have gained from the preceding modules, can you identify the central question of this study? How do the researchers encapsulate the four elements of a good research question we discussed (Luker 2008)?
- Specific – What potential relationships do the researchers consider among the variables?
- Relevant – How do these relationships help us draw conclusions that are relevant to social life?
- Empirical – How does the data allow for a range of possible answers to the question?
- Debatable – What broader intellectual conversations in social science will this study advance?
Remember from our previous modules that effective research questions should be specific, empirical, debatable and relevant. As you design your own research question, you might want to bear these principles in mind while consulting previous research as a source of inspiration. Other researchers’ works often directly point to heated topics in the field and the gaps that remain. Situating your project to address those gaps and answer a real-life concern means you are on the right track to ask interesting questions – a significant first step in conducting your research!
