Designing your research question Farah Huzair farah huzaired

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

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

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 3

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. 4

Brainstorming your research questions 1. On the paper handed out write your topic area 2. Pass it to your left 3. Read the topic, add a question 5

WWWWW What, Can…. . ? How many …. . ? How do…. ? Why …. . ? Who …. . ? Where…. . ? What if …. . ? Others? ? ? “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 6

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? . . . 7

Different kinds of research question Type of question Typical examples of research methods What? Surveys / structured interviews; archives; ‘administrative’ statistics, content analysis, structured observation How, Can? Surveys; simple modelling; semi-structured interviews Case studies; experiment; semi-structured Why, Where, Who? interview What if? Source: output operations causality Experiment; scenarios; multi-variable modelling; unstructured / qualitative interviews, focus modification groups 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. 8

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

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

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 Q 1) 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 Q 2) Do such institutional relationships contribute to complementarities and potentially translate into improved production times? 11

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. 12