Research questions: finding, formulating, revising

Types of questions (1/2)

Comparative research questions

Almost all research questions rest on comparisons. 

For example, if you want to describe the characteristics of Hong Kong English, you need to compare Hong Kong English to other varieties of English, e.g. South African English or British English. Only by comparison can you see how Hong Kong English differs from other English varieties.

In a similar way, if you want to find an effective method for teaching vocabulary, you need to compare different methods with one another. Only by comparison can you identify which of the teaching methods helps students learn faster or more sustainably.

However, there are different ways of articulating these comparisons. The most straight-forward way is the comparative research question.

Comparative research questions direct the researchers', the students', and the readers' attention towards the comparison between two or more objects of investigation. A comprehensible and powerful comparative research question has the following characteristics:

  •  The comparison is explicitly stated in the comparative question.

Below, you can see examples for bad and good comparative research questions.

This is an incomplete question. It is not clear who or what we are comparing here. Are we comparing adult learners with young learners? Are we comparing adult learners' number errors with adult learners' agreement errors? We cannot tell.
This is a complete comparative question. We can see that we are comparing the learners' performance in two different situations, i.e. when they are nervous with when they are relaxed.
This is a complete comparative question. We can see that we are comparing the learners' performance after receiving two different kinds of feedback.

When you start planning your project and formulating your research question(s), you need to keep the following in mind:

Strictly speaking, every single research question rests on one or more comparisons.

qtitle
Definition
Term