Research Questions for Team Research

When a team is doing research, it is critical that the team shares in the process of identifying the question, and understands it in broadly similar ways. When the team extends beyond the academy then it becomes particularly important to frame a question that contributes both to academic understanding and to public policy. Transdisciplinarians talk about how problems are transformed as they are turned into research questions.

Bergmann and Jahn (2008) in the Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research argue that research questions must themselves emerge from a team effort: the team is motivated by some shared societal concern or problem but must then identify a well-defined research question (or questions) that can be pursued by scholars. Developing the question and creating the team may themselves be symbiotic processes. Messerli and Messerli (2008, 53-4) observe that environmental [and social] problems often occur in clusters or syndromes, and thus guiding questions must often be multi-faceted.

“As a PI [Principal Investigator] initiates conversations with (potential) colleagues, … it is the definition of the problem—rather than a common theoretical framework and corollary set of conceptual issues—that structures the nature of sought‐after research collaboration. The focus on a problem helps orient the potential partners and provides the foundation on which the discipline‐based researchers build their joint analytical and methodological frameworks. Through such a problem focus, and over time, team members see less need for discipline authorization and are able to move comfortably and coherently across each other's fields and frameworks” Fr om Kessel, F.S., Rosenfield, P. L., & Anderson, N. B. (Eds.). Interdisciplinary research: Case studies from health and social science (2nd ed.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Several authors speak of identifying sub-questions for disciplinary research. Wiesman et al. (2008, 436) stress the symbiotic relationship between specialized and integrative research. Bergmann and Jahn alternatively celebrate the advantages of having interdisciplinary subgroups pursue sub-questions: it is then much easier to achieve integration at the level of the project as a whole. In either case, it is essential that the relationship between the guiding question and sub-questions be carefully specified at the outset, though of course the relationship may change as research proceeds. It is also essential that there be regular interactions between subgroups: integration cannot just be left till the end (2008, 94). [all cites except Kessel from Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research]

Bergmann, Matthias , Thomas Jahn, Tobias Knobloch, Wolfgang Krohn, Christian Pohl, Engelbert Schramm (2012) Methods for Transdisciplinary Research: A Primer for Practice. Berlin: Campus also stress the importance of choosing questions that reflect the interests of all, including social actors: it is useful to ask how they can be given tools to exercise better options.