Unit 3 Wildemuth, Chapter 2 Develop Research Question

Developing a research question
p. 11

Define your research question
clear statement will help to stay focused

question can come from 

• your own experience, 
• direct observation of situation or event, 
• discussion with colleagues or 
• exposure in the field

"recent study provides new information" 

"theory that has been proposed"

p. 12

should be personally interested & motivated to answer

"statement of what you wish to know about some unsatisfactory question"

"clarify the purposes or goals of the study" - motivation/intention

"unpack it a bit"

look at your personal perspective on it, stakeholders perspective

consider newly revealed relevant idea

cultural context

prevailing worldview

Make sure question has not already been answered by others - know what others have found

p. 13

Four important things to consider:

• Should be some uncertainty about the answer
• Is the question important?
• "symmetry of potential outcomes" - findings should be useful
• should be realistic and feasible

Components of a problem statement, iterative process, each time through clarifies

• lead-in 
• claim for originality - literature review
• justification of study's value

p. 14

"Research question is situated within a conceptual framework" 

based on your "integration of ideas from other rearchers and your own reflections on current knowledge"

concepts & relationships

Makes clear researchers:

• assumptions 
• expectations
• beliefs 
• theories

start with several questions of interest, get clear, not too broad or narrow, 

define ambiguous words

p. 15

Best question:

• clear, unambiguous and easily understood
• specific - suggest data to be collected
• answerable
• interconnected with concepts, phenomena
• substantially relevant to the field.

Question should indicate data necessary to answer

Question will guide development of methods

Spectrum of approaches from/to:

• most precise: hypotheses to be tested, fixed
• general guidance to research effort - more exploratory and open, loosely structured, evolve as they proceed, flexible

Implications for the sample to be studied

• which people, organizations, settings of interest
• questions have implications for the data to be selected
• which of my question does each method or data source addresses?
• link data collection efforts
• use analysis methods to help focus on answering question

p. 16

"keep scale of research in tune with size of problem"

access to the people? identify & locate, convince a sample to participate

equipment / resources required - financial resources

political support? - approval of mgmt? obstacles?

Funding sources - 

private, public, specialized databases, related articles, 

check what has been funded in the past

initiatives recently announced

p. 17

funding restrictions - state, areas of interest, views

phenomena of interest in ILS - strong need for high-quality descriptive studies