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Designing your research question Farah Huzair farah.huzair@ed.ac.uk

Designing your research question Farah Huzair farah.huzair@ed.ac.uk. April 2018. Session Aims To help you to explore and refine your research questions To begin to think about what research methods to choose. Where do research questions come from?. The published literature

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Designing your research question Farah Huzair farah.huzair@ed.ac.uk

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  1. Designing your research questionFarah Huzair farah.huzair@ed.ac.uk April 2018

  2. Session Aims To help you to explore and refine your research questions To begin to think about what research methods to choose

  3. Where do research questions come from? • The published literature • Challenging existing assumptions and research ideas and views of your colleagues and supervisors • Your own professional practice and/or circumstances • From what you want the research to achieve • Your funder

  4. How do you develop research questions? • Questioning: what you know; how do you know this? are you sure about it? what other possibilities exist? • Free writing and word-doodling about your topic: writing down what you know and what you don't know. • Brainstorming: what do other people think? how are their ideas different? what are they interested in that you haven't thought about? Challenge opinions and ask people to defend them.

  5. Brainstorming your research questions • On the paper handed out write your topic area • Pass it to your left • Read the topic, add a question

  6. “I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who” -Rudyard Kipling ‘Just So’ Stories What, Can….. ? How many ….. ? How do….? Why ….. ? Who ….. ? Where….. ? What if ….. ? Others??? W WWWW

  7. Reformulating the question can help you think through the different understandings alternative approaches might produce Rewrite your research question (or one of your key questions) as a ‘what’; ‘how’; ‘why’; ‘who’ and ‘what if’? Methods?...

  8. Different kinds of research question output operations causality modification Source: Adapted from Chapter 1 (pp 27-48) of Thomas, A. and Mohan, G. (Eds) (2007): Research Skills for Policy and Development: how to find out fast. London, Sage.

  9. What are the tasks associated with your research question? • What data would you need for different questions? • Where would you get it? • How would you get it? • How practical it is to gather your data with the time and resources you have available Different sorts of questions require different sorts of data

  10. Turning research questions into tasks How doable is this research question as it stands? Remember the elephant

  11. The role of sub research questions: How will proposed changes in the legislative framework assist in the development and delivery of a pandemic influenza vaccine in Canada? Sub Q1) What new institutional relationships between upstream actors involved in vaccine testing and production will form as a result of changes in the legislative framework? Sub Q2) Do such institutional relationships contribute to complementarities and potentially translate into improved production times?

  12. Criteria for good research questions • Be convertible into specific tasks • Have a comparative element • Specify when you have done enough • Specify the: Field of Study - Limits the ‘population’ studied (e.g. geographical area, industrial sector, person type, topic boundary) - Unit of analysis - Measures used • Have theoretical links with big questions in the subject area as a whole.

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