{"id":2404,"date":"2021-02-07T07:44:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T12:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/?p=2404"},"modified":"2024-05-06T07:25:59","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T11:25:59","slug":"developing-a-research-question-part-1-generate-your-own-research-question-from-scratch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/2021\/02\/07\/developing-a-research-question-part-1-generate-your-own-research-question-from-scratch\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing a Research Question – Part 1: Generate Your Own Research Question from Scratch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today, I\u2019d like to provide some guidance about research questions. This will be a two-part feature. Part 1 will include a description of research questions and guidance to help you develop your own. For Pat 2 (in 2 weeks), I will focus on how to use other sources as inspirations for your research questions. A research question is used to clarify the scope of your research project. It is a narrower version of the topic that you\u2019re interested in studying. A good research question should be specific, include the variables you are interested in studying, and be testable in a finite amount of time. Your variables should also be operationally defined. It\u2019s not enough to say \u201cchildren\u201d for example; you should specify \u201c5-8-year-olds\u201d. Similarly \u201cdo better\u201d is not a good way to operationalize student success because it\u2019s not easy to measure; instead, phrase it as \u201cearn higher scores on Test 3\u201d because that is how you will measure whether they have done better. Although specific, \u201cWhen will the pandemic end?\u201d is also not a good research question for many of the reason above. In many ways, a good research question is similar to a good course learning outcome: it should be clear, specific, and measurable within a designated time frame and in a particular sample. What will you be able to demonstrate\/answer at the end of your research project?
Here are 3 good examples of testable research questions related to SoTL:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What personal and educational factors contribute to student test performance in college?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What can General Education faculty do to prevent first year student attrition in their courses?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How has online education affected college students\u2019 mental health?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that you know more about research questions, here is how you can generate one of your own:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.    Select a broad topic area that interests you (e.g., student learning, student mental health, etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.    List some questions or problems that are interesting to you (e.g., Why are students finding this topic difficult? What did I change to make this semester\u2019s grades much lower\/higher? Why are students choosing online education when given a choice of delivery modes? Etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.    Pick one of the questions you generated in #2 to begin refining it. If you aren\u2019t sure which one to pick, you can try to brainstorm what you already know about these question- this can help steer you towards a particular aspect of your topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.    Refine your research question by doing a literature search to see what others have already done. You want your research question to contribute to the field in some way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Finalize your research question. Ensure it is testable and specific. You may now also form a hypothesis about the outcome of your study (i.e., What do you think your data will show? What will be the answer to your question?)
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Two additional points to consider: First, once you have your final research question, you will need to consider the feasibility by thinking about the logistical details. Start thinking about who will be studied, what data you will need, and how you will obtain those data. Don\u2019t forget to also consider the resources required (time, money, etc). If the research does not seem feasible (time, financing, etc) you may decide to move on to a different question instead, so return to your list of research questions and pick another one. Second, although I have presented this as though you can only have one research question, many projects have multiple questions. But it\u2019s a good idea to focus on one primary research question before trying to develop additional primary research questions (or secondary ones).
Stay tuned for Part 2 in a couple of weeks where I will focus on other sources of inspiration for research questions.\u00a0As always, if you have any suggestions for things you\u2019d like to see from me, please reach out to me via email or on MS Teams, or pop in during my weekly \u201coffice hours\u201d on whereby(dot)com(slash)drlynne<\/a> (every Friday from 12:30-1:30).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I\u2019d like to provide some guidance about research questions. This will be a two-part feature. Part 1 will include a description of research questions and guidance to help you develop your own. For Pat 2 (in 2 weeks), I will focus on how to use other sources as inspirations for your research questions. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2521,"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drlynnekennette.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}