Research Question

A research question identifies the topic of your evaluation and outlines what you hope to accomplish through your evaluation. 

As you develop your question, you will need to think about different stakeholders who want or need to learn from your evaluation. Stakeholders are anyone who has an interest—or "stake"—in your project and the information you are collecting.  They are the people who participate in or make decisions about your project topic, and who will need to hear your recommendations. 

Stakeholders will be different for every YPE project, but some people or groups to consider include:

• • Other students

  • Teachers

  • Principal

  • MPS Superintendent and other district staff

  • Families and other people in your school community

  • Policymakers who create Minnesota’s education laws 

MPS YPE has used the following prompt to help young people brainstorm possible research questions:

What is getting in the way of you and your classmates having the school experience you want to have?

Youth first individually think of as many responses to that question as they can. Each idea should be written on a separate post it note. They should be specific, so that someone who doesn't go to their school can understand, and they should NOT use names. Encourage youth to name the behavior or trait, not the individual.

The team should then share their ideas with one another and "code" (or organize into themes) the post it notes. 

Once you have identified themes, your team should discuss the following:

• Where did most of our post-it notes end up? 

• What specific issues are most relevant at our school?

• What issue would other students at our school be the most interested in?

• What issue could we be successful in changing? 

These factors should help your team determine which theme they want to work on this year. 

Then, they should turn the theme into a research question. Possible structures include:

• At our school, does ___________ impact ___________?  If so, ___________?

• Do ___________ at our school think ___________? What do they want to do about it?

• Do students and staff at our school think that the hat and hood policy is effective and equitable? What does each stakeholder think the hat and hood policy should be?

• At our school, does race impact enrollment in advanced classes? If so, what do students think needs to change so all students feel welcome in advanced classes? 

• At our school, do student-teacher relationships impact learning? If so, what suggestions do students have for their teachers?