STEVE CAMPITELLI: Welcome to this video
on developing a research question presented
by Academic Skills at the University of Melbourne.
The research question is fundamental,
and a lot of people consider it to be the most important
component of research.
Why?
Why do you think that is?
Everything is focused on answering the research
question.
When you're thinking about your research project,
your research question, consider a few questions
that you can answer for yourself.
The primary one is, what do I want to know.
What am I aiming to find out.
Are there any interesting points that come out of the data
that you might have or that you're going to get.
Do you understand that data.
Can it provide answers to what you want to know.
Will you be able to question the data, pull things out.
Fundamentally ask yourself, can I answer the question.
The research question needs to summarise the significant issue
that the research intends to investigate.
So what are the features of a good research question.
Primarily, it needs to be relevant.
It has to be an issue covered by the research.
It's manageable.
Keep it within scope.
Don't go too large, but you can't be too small either.
We'll talk more about this.
Is it specific.
Is it measurable.
Can you investigate it.
It has to be clear and simple in the sense
that the readers, who are engaging with the research
question and the research itself,
need to understand what you're hoping to find out.
Is it interesting again in the sense
that any readers who are engaging with this
will be interested in that research.
It's a substantial question.
Is it legitimate.
Is it a question, not a statement.
And, perhaps fundamentally, can you actually provide an answer
to that research question.
So, again, is it investigatable.
So how do I formulate one?
Well, identify the broader subject of interest
that is arising out of the data, if you have the data.
If it's before the data, stick with the broader subject
of interest again.
So, for example, it might be something like cyberbullying.
Research that general topic to find out what literature
and what data exists already.
Then what you want to do is to start
narrowing the topic by asking how and why questions
around this topic.
So, for example, why is cyberbullying
becoming more prevalent.
Now, what do you notice about that question?
I'm hoping you're thinking it's still pretty wide.
So what we want to do is to get into something more specific,
something more measurable, something like that.
What are the social factors leading
to the increasing prevalence of cyberbullying
in young Australians.
It's quite specific.
It's measurable.
We're looking at factors that we can investigate.
So a tip, make it open-ended enough
so it can't just be answered by a simple yes or no
or a simple number.
Some elements to consider, the construct.
What's the idea that you're investigating.
Get beyond the data.
Don't just rely on the data.
It needs to extend it.
Application, is the question broad enough to show relevance
within your field.
So that's not too narrow, not too specific just
to be of interest or relevance to you
and a couple of other people, but to the broader
academic area.
And it speaks to the 'so what?' factor.
When you're looking at this, you might ask yourself 'so what?'.
And what you're asking there is, why is this important.
Why do I need to investigate this.
Try to have an answer for that.
So what's some of the sample research question
language that you might use.
It's grounded in the question forms
you're going to form the question around.
The words like what, how, why, does.
And here are some sample questions
on the screen in front of you.
Addressing the 'so what?' factor,
at some point you'll be asking yourself or using the language
which says this shows that.
Why is it important?
This is important because, this is significant because, this
points to, this suggests that.
And that type of language helps you get to the 'so what?'
factor behind this.
The why is this important.
Interpretive 'so what?' language should always appear somewhere
in academic discourse, whether it's at the point where
you're questioning yourself why it's important or when
you're doing the writing, explaining the rationale
for why you're doing that research or what it means.
So a process, determine the broad topic,
we've talked about that.
Draft a research question.
Then, a crucial point, out of the research question
form a purpose statement which says
why we're investigating this.
It will be something like the purpose of this study
is to investigate, determine, establish, and so on.
It's a purpose statement.
And then out of the purpose statement
you might need to revise your research question.
OK.
Let's make one.
I hope you're familiar with the classic English language
joke of why did the chicken cross the road,
because that's what we're looking at.
So a broad topic, chickens crossing roads.
Why?
Why do chickens cross roads?
Purpose statement, the purpose of this study
is to determine the causes of why chickens cross roads.
Research question, version one, why
did the chicken cross the road?
What do you think of this question?
Too broad?
Correct, too broad.
Not specific enough.
It relies on qualitative data, which
may not be attainable because chickens don't interview well,
as we know.
Version two, how many chickens crossed Grattan Street
in the period January to July?
Is this better?
It is, but it's gone the other way.
It's too specific.
It's closed information.
We can answer this with a statistic, a number,
very quickly.
Let's try again.
What are some of the environmental factors that
occurred in Parkville between January and July
that would cause chickens to cross Grattan Street?
We're looking at factors.
We're looking at causal factors that occurred in the area
in a specific time period.
We're starting to get specific, but we're also
looking at the why.
Why are chickens doing this.
But we can measure it.
We can investigate it.
It gets to the why and investigates
the purpose statement of determining
why chickens cross roads.
OK.
I hope you get the idea about the process, the language,
the need to be specific, the need to be relevant.
Here are some resources.
You can click on those URLs and go
to a series of similar type of information
which will give you a little bit more idea around developing
a research question.
Good luck with developing your research question.