Developing Research Questions

Most people associate research with doing something: observing people, using equipment, or analyzing data. However, the most critical parts of the research process are those parts that are associated with thinking not doing. This section explains how to develop research questions, define variables, and formulate hypotheses. Unless these three areas are carefully done the researcher will waste his/her time in running around observing people, using equipment, and analyzing data.

After one has become interested in an area of inquiry, and has studied the available literature, it is time to formulate a research question and develop hypotheses. This stage is the most crucial part of research. If one is not exactly clear about what one is studying, then the result is a very muddy research study. Contrary to myth many research studies are muddy and ill conceived, because of careless thinking at this stage of the process.

A research question is a formal statement of the goal of a study. The research question states clearly what the study will investigate or attempt to prove. The research question is a logical statement that progresses from what is known or believed to be true (as determined by the literature review) to that is unknown and requires validation.

The two paragraphs below are an example of how the literature review is summarized and how the research question is developed.

One's death is often considered with trepidation and uncertainty. Clients facing eminent death often suffer severe anxiety. Client anxiety can reduce the effectiveness of pain reducing medication, distract the client from achieving peace in the contemplation of their death, cloud the client's judgement when settling their affairs, and throw increased stress on the client's family. Previous research on the dying process by Kubler-Ross (19??) has identified five behavioral stages in the process of dying; 1) denial, 2) anger, 3) bargaining, 4) depression, and 5) acceptance. It has also been demonstrated that each dying person does not exhibit all the stages, nor are the stages exhibited in any one specific order. Previous researchers (Smith and Jones, 19??) have asserted that the dying person needs to go through these stages to reach a state of acceptance of their own pending death. This state of acceptance has been shown to be indicated by a reduction in anxiety, as indicated by galvanic skin response recordings, when the client discusses their pending death (Bixfszk, 19??).

Given the above information, the research question for this study is: Are the dying person's anxiety levels towards death reduced if certain stages are exhibited in certain sequences? If this study shows that certain stages exhibited in certain sequences significantly reduce client anxiety, then special counseling programs can be developed for dying clients. This counseling program would emphasize dealing with the stages that are shown to be essential. In this way clients could to terms with their own deaths with less stress.

The research question, as may be deduced from the above example, is a statement of what the researcher wants to discover. The research question is based on previous discoveries (as located in the literature review) and can be either a general statement or a specific hypothesis. The research question is the purpose of a study summed up in one or two sentences. Often the title of a research study will be the research question.

Often to begin the literature search process that preceeds the development of a research study, the researcher formulates a research question. One way to do this is to write a Topic Sentence. This is the research question summarized in one sentence of this form: "What is the effect of something on something else?" Let's define the terms in the example.

  1. "Something" - This is a variable. It is the variable that efects another variable.
  2. "Something Else" - This is another variable. It is the variable that is changed due to the effects of the first variable.
  3. "Effect" - This is the process that happens when one variable relates with another.
Here is a sample Topic Sentence: "As a person gets older the amount of their body that is muscle mass decreases."

Let's define the components:

  1. "Something" - "a person gets older." The variable of "aging."
  2. "Something Else" - "amount of their body that is muscle mass." The variable is the amount of muscle .
  3. "Effect" - "decreases." - The effect of aging on muscle mass is predicted.
A Topic Sentence can be a statement or a question.

It is important to be able to identify the research question. The other components of a study grow from the research question in a logical manner. Once we have a clear research question, the question leads to specific variables. The variables are the observable phenomena that can be studied. A variable varies, that is it can be observed to change, or can take on different attributes. Gender is a variable and it can take on two different attributes, male and female. A knowledge of the variables allows us to understand the hypotheses of the study. The hypotheses describe the predicted relationships between the variables. The next chapter goes into more details.