Research questions: finding, formulating, revising
Revising
The first step in revising your research questions is assessing whether they fulfill the following characteristics:
- Specificity: Does your research question provide enough specifics/details that the audience can easily understand its purpose without needing additional explanation? Does it use vocabulary that is vague or needs definition? Are the premises made explicit?
- Focus: Is it focused on a single problem or issue? Is it narrow enough to be covered?
- Complexity: Is the question sufficiently complex, i.e. does it require synthesis and analysis of ideas and sources prior to composition of an answer?
- Openness: Does the question allow for several possible answers? Are the potential answers open to debate rather than already accepted facts
- Relevance: Why does the answer to your question matter? Is the answer to the question interesting to your field of study or society more broadly? Does the answer promise novelty or innovation by means of confirming, refuting or extending previous research findings?