DEVELOPING RESEARCH QUESTIONS
- a few tips to help you develop your research question; do this with a friend -

Imagine that you are in a panel of project assessors. The panel has a sum of money to give and you have to convince them that you have got a good research idea. This is shown not by saying this is really, really, no, really, really, good, but by making your research proposal clear, coherent, well thought through. Before reading your research proposal, they’ll have an introduction to it through your Research Question.

Your role is to make your friend’s research question become more focused; and viceversa.

By turns, each one of you explains your research question, the role of the other in the panel is to put questions until you have a more focused research question. Here are some examples of questions that the assessors may want to ask:

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What topic / area interests you? What exactly in it (the topic)? What specific points interest you in that topic?

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How is the info going to be collected? How is it going to be analysed? What methods?

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What material / source are you going to use? Have you checked it? What sample? Any specific time frame? Any specific location/region/country? Any specific group of people/institutions?

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Is it realistic? Are you looking at too many things? Is it too general of an idea?

At the end of the session, you should all end up with one single sentence (possibly two) stating what your research topic is and how you will address it. Even if you then have to amend it