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What is the research question section?
The goal of the research question section is to clearly state the question you are asking and why finding an answer to the question is important. Note that the degree of importance needn’t be life-changing, ground-breaking, or reality changing; rather, you should be able to demonstrate—using research—that the question addresses a current problem/challenge or provides clarity on some issue.
How do I frame my research question?
Note that your research question should generally be asking one of the following:
Whether something (x) has an impact on/a correlation with something else (y); OR
Which things in x category is best/worst (this is essentially a ranking question); OR
What the degree of an impact/correlation re: x to y is; OR
How/What is the mechanism by which x has an impact on/correlation with y; OR
If you are asking #3 or #4, then your background section should either a.) show that past research has fairly conclusively demonstrated that #1 is already true; or b.) show that there is a mix of research on the issue—some finding an impact/correlation and some not—and then explain in the methodology section why you believe the research finding an impact/correlation is more convincing than the research that hasn’t found one, such that you can ask your current research question.
Many students are asking questions about whether a relationship between variables, populations, laws/policies, etc. exists and asking questions similar to 2 and 3. If you are, I recommend holding off on the second question for now, as it can easily be a full paper just to demonstrate/discuss the existence of such a relationship. Additionally, it’s good practice not to assume a relationship exists when planning on what you are writing about—after all, if you find that one doesn’t exist, it renders you subsequent
What is my research question is more like a hypothesis?
If your paper is more experimental in nature (this should be less common), you might (also) have a hypothesis for your topic. This is a prediction of what the relationship between the variables is. If so, be sure your background section firmly establishes what information informed your hypothesis. Using the above 3 research questions, your hypothesis should generally be phrased similarly to one of the following:
I predict that x will have a positive/negative/non-existent impact on y; OR
I predict that thing A, thing D, and thing Q are the best/worst; OR
I predict that the size of x’s impact on y will be small/large (the amount should be
quantified as specifically as possible, backed up with research/rationale to show how
reached the predicted amount); OR
I predict that x’s impact on y is achieved by abc (with research to show why that is a
reasonable prediction)
What is a methodology section?
The goal of the methodology section is to convey to the reader information about your evaluative criteria (prongs) and the manner in which you went about collecting and analyzing your data. This explanation should allow someone else to not only fully understand but replicate your process.
What goes into discussing the evaluative criteria/prongs?
The evaluative criteria should be fairly neutral and not tied specifically to your substantive topic, but to the category under which your topic falls. So, if you are evaluating whether a specific policy has an impact on sentencing length, your criteria should be neutral enough that ANY policy could be evaluated the same way to come up with an answer.
For example, if my research question is “What is the best fruit to consume?”, my evaluative criteria (as listed before in the outline) are:
Availability (e.g. price, harvest period, geographical location, etc.)
Nutritional value
Level of pleasure in its consumption
Note that these criteria could be used to evaluate the consumption of any number of other things, simply by replacing “fruit” with things like “vegetable”, “pasta noodle”, “chocolate”, or even something like “bed sheet thread count”. I can use the same “test” to compare different vegetables to each other, different noodles to each other, etc. for chocolates and thread counts using the exact same criteria.
If you want to determine whether x has an impact on y, what aspects or characteristics are you using to define an “impact”? If you want to find the degree of impact, what are the different forms of measurement being used? Be sure to justify your choices via research. Note, however, that other research might be tangentially tied to your specific question/topic, but still be relevant. For example, I could use information on the nutritional value of various fruits more generally, information gathered from a variety of sources that have nothing to do with evaluating which
fruits to eat, the price of fruits, etc. It could be in an article simply looking at the various shades of a particular color fruit comes in, and the provision of nutritional information is just a part of the article—that’s totally fine, since the only information being used from it is nutritional information on different fruits.
How do I describe my research process? It feels like all I did was look for journal articles!
While you may not realize it, your process involved so much more than that! For example:
You developed specific search terms that helped narrow your search;
You made decisions about whether to use articles that used quantitative or qualitative data
gathered by the authors (or that used mixed methods!);
You determined what polling center data to use and the appropriate timeframe (e.g. only
the past 20 years, from each decade since a policy was started, etc.);
You determined what descriptive data you needed and which institutions/organizations
(e.g. non-profit organizations, government agencies, financial/legal firms, etc.) to use as
the source for the data;
You found specific authors/researchers whose research was frequently cited, whose
research area matched your topic, etc. and thus narrowed your search for information accordingly
And so many more possibilities! This is the section in which you’ll describe those processes, and you’ll use research to justify those choices where you can but otherwise your own observations. For example, maybe a lot of articles were tagged in a certain way, in which case you cite to the articles that have a specific tag (hashtags are, afterall, just an extension of other methods of “tagging” or categorizing things and were directly influenced by the tagging system used in libraries).
Or, maybe a few articles used Pew polls and you found other research articles that all demonstrated or discussed the reliability of Pew polls, which justified your choice in using them as well (and keep in mind, some of those articles that say “Pew polls are awesome” might not necessarily related to your topic at all, and that’s ok!).
This is the section to chronicle that part of your process, such that I could hand your paper to another scholar and they could conduct research in a similar manner and come up with similar results.