This post is one in a series of guest blogs by Dr Zina O’Leary, Senior Fellow at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and internationally-recognized leader in research methodologies.
Zina is the author of SAGE Campus’ upcoming Present Your Research, Research Proposal and Research Question online courses, launching in 2021. The courses are inspired by SAGE’s popular Little Quick Fixes book series and you can read Zina’s last post on presentations that influence here.
What do you think is the most critical think you need to do in the conduct of research?
It is to ARTICULATE YOUR QUESTION.
Now you may be thinking, ‘I have a pretty good idea about what I want to research - isn’t that enough?’. Well, the answer is an unequivocal NO. There are a lot of students who want to jump right into their research project without taking the time to really think through and develop their research question. Some have ideas about their topic, but they are not clear on the aspects they want to explore. Others will have their ideas narrowed down but have not clearly articulated this in a researchable question.
I have to say, I am a real stickler for a good research question. They are absolutely fundamental to good research. After all, how will you know when you have found the answer to your question, if you can’t say what your question is?
Remember: research is a decision-making journey.
The process, in fact, demands that you constantly engage in decision-making that is logical, consistent and coherent. And what do you think is the benchmark for logical, consistent and coherent decision-making? It’s that the choices you make take you one step closer to being able to answer your research question credibly. So without clear articulation of your question you are really travelling blind.
Research questions are essential because they:
• Define an investigation
• Set boundaries
• Provide direction
• Act as a frame of reference for assessing your work
Now I don’t want to make it sound like research questions are reductionist devices that take all exploration, creativity and fluidity out of the research process. Not at all. Research questions themselves can be designed so that they are open and exploratory. As well, research questions can, and often do, change, shift and evolve during the early stages of a project. This is as it should be, since your engagement in the literature evolves both your knowledge and thinking.
Yes, research questions define an investigation and provide direction, but it is up to the researcher to define and redefine questions so that they can most appropriately accomplish these tasks.
If you want to learn these skills yourself or are interested in assigning them to your students, researchers or staff, register your interest for a free module of the online courses at the pages below:
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