Focusing your Research Question

Because questions define the limits of what you know, they can help focus your search to know more. Unlike questions, topics merely point to subject areas. Whether narrow or broad, these subject areas bear little relation to the problem that has you pursuing research. Your first task when starting a research paper is to shift from a topic orientation to a questioning stance -- a stance in which you are constantly formulating and refocusing your research question. Questions are the engines that drive your research. Here's why.

• 1. A research question motivates, focuses, and directs your work. It re­minds you why your work matters and what purpose it can serve. Your research question also helps you define your audience, for a question is always answered for someone. Moreover, questions help demystify the research process by suggesting how and where you might direct your inquiry.

  2. Pointed questions help ensure that your project is workable given the time and space you have available. As you refine and focus your ques­tion, making it always more specific, you can avoid glib generalities of the sort you might find under a general topic heading in an encyclopaedia.

  3. Unlike a topic, a question can help you see your way through the avalanche of information you are likely to encounter as you conduct your research. Questions help you identify the information you need and lend relevance to the material you gather. Moreover, only when you formulate a question can you put information to use.

  4. A question helps you to define and solve the unknowns in your project. The marvellous thing about a question is that it prompts you to look for an answer. Questions can elicit hunches that, even if vague or unformed, can lead to unforeseen conclusions.

  5. As you learn more, questions change. By adopting a questioning stance, you help guarantee that your research will evolve and grow, and not stop at a preliminary point where you may rehearse the obvious. Along with your core question, develop an array of related secondary questions to help you answer more specific issues. Your research question is itself a moving target that can keep your work on the move.