Research questions: finding, formulating, revising
General vs. research questions (1/2)
In research publications, such as journal articles, the researcher(s) often begin their introduction with one or more general questions.
Unlike research questions, these general questions have the following characteristics:
- General questions name the persons under investigation in a research project in general terms.
- General questions name the corpus or material in the research project only in general terms.
- General questions name the behavior or actions under investigation in the research project only in general terms.
Both, general questions and research questions may be formulated as actual questions with a question mark or as statements with question words such as how, in how far, which, whether, etc.
In the following examples for general questions, you will see the sections from various research publications in which the the researchers describe people, objects, and behaviors under inverstigation in mostly unspecific terms.
When you read research literature in order to develop your research question, you need to keep the following convention in mind:
General questions are not research questions!