Research Coordinator Blog

  Before we begin, a reminder that a research question is a specific, testable question that clearly identifies the variables of interest. It identifies the scope and goal of your research project. Last time, we looked at how to develop a research question from scratch. This time, I will outline some other places you can find inspiration for a research question. Your favourite journal article. Do you have a favourite journal article? Oh. It’s just me then? Okay, well…if you have ever read a journal article that you really liked, that’s a good place to start! Specifically, focus your reading on their discussion section for ideas. Most papers identify shortcomings of their research (e.g., “We couldn’t address this possible confounding variable, so we can’t provide a strong conclusion.”), gaps in the literature which still exist (e.g., “Although we showed that …it is still not clear whether….”), and/or directions for future research (“Building on this research, future studies should e...

  Today, I’d 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’re 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’s not enough to say “children” for example; you should specify “5-8-year-olds”. Similarly “do better” is not a good way to operationalize student success because it’s not easy to measure; instead, phrase it as “earn higher scores on Test 3” because that is how you will measure whether they have done better. Although specific, “When w...