ABSTRACT
As a supervisor, doctoral convenor and book reviews editor for an educational research journal, a large number of books on doing social research find their way into my hands during the course of a year. Although I cannot claim to have read them all, I often scan through them for specific issues and topics. In particular, I am always on the lookout for a good reading on research questions to accompany a course I convene on research design, but am never very satisfied. Virtually all the books mention research questions as being very important and many stress that not having good ones can seriously weaken the research project. Wilkinson (2000: 16) even goes as far as to claim that many research projects fail because of poor decisions over research questions. However, having issued the warning this book, like most of the rest goes immediately on to other matters without further discussion about what would constitute suitable research questions to avoid failure. Perhaps this is because as Bryman (2004: 31) suggests, ‘the process of formulating and assessing research questions is difficult to spell out’. My suspicion is, however, that in many cases the reason so little space is devoted to the subject is because the process is assumed by many to be a technical one; the way that research questions relate to the wider methodology of research is under estimated. In this chapter I shall argue that selecting research questions is not just a straightforward technical matter. On the contrary, it is a complex task, which brings together a great deal of thinking about the fundamental issues that underpin the project, the way the research is practised and the knowledge that it will hope to produce. However, it is this complexity that gives meaning and importance to social research and what makes its practice so exciting. Moreover, the chapter will also contain practical suggestions as to how to generate research questions where this complexity can be turned to advantage in finding a methodological fit with the intentions of the researcher and others involved in the research.
For qualitative researchers the research process seems to be full of questions.1 It is launched with a proposal containing questions; a dataset is created usually through using research
methods such as interviews or questionnaires, which depend on questions; and even when the thesis is written, it will need to be defended in an oral examination or defence, which is structured by the questions of the examiners. However, of all these, the research questions are arguably the most important. Research question(s) – for there may only be a single main one – are a device to encapsulate what your research is about. They summarise and sit at the top of a hierarchy of all the other questions that make up the research. They are the super-ordinate, the big questions that both generate and are generated by all the smaller questions. The most frequently identified way in which research questions work is as a heuristic
device for the researcher. They provide focus by defining what the project is about and, equally importantly, they provide boundaries about what the research is not about. Bryman (2004: 31), for example, suggests that they therefore ‘stop you from going off in unnecessary directions and tangents’ throughout the research process. He continues that they guide your literature search, your decisions about research design and about what data you should ‘collect’ and from whom; they shape the way that you will analyse the data and the way that you write up the research. Whilst I generally concur with this and will later explore its implications, the research
questions are not just a device for the researcher, but also for the other people involved in your research. For example, research questions may be a way of explaining to collaborators and informants what the research is about. Although the notion of obtaining informed consent is not as straightforward either practically or conceptually across all contexts as it may appear, it does form a useful basis for thinking about the implications and consequences of other people’s involvement. If the fundamental questions the research is addressing have not been broached, it may be difficult to make a case for informed consent having been negotiated. Even where, as in my own doctoral research, the researcher decides against giving the research questions to participants, their formulation can be important in thinking about what to say to them, what to withhold and in making a case as to why. If the research questions are essential to the researcher and the researched, they are also
important to the readers and users of the research. Amongst this group, those most salient are the examiners appointed by the university to decide whether you get your doctorate or not. The criteria for a doctoral degree are slightly different at different universities, some specifying more in terms of the process and the acquisition of expected competencies. However, agreement throughout the English-speaking world converges on a criterion of knowledge. Taking three out of many possible examples, a candidate’s thesis or dissertation is expected to demonstrate, in the UK: ‘the creation and interpretation of new knowledge’ (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education 2008); in Australia: ‘value of original contribution to knowledge in the field’ (Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies 2005); and in the USA: ‘a genuine contribution to knowledge’ (University of Alabama 2008). It is often useful to think of a doctoral thesis as being pyramid-shaped: the different elements of the research, all the steady building of the conceptualisation, the fieldwork, the telling of the story, the analysis and the creation of an argument culminates in the apex of this contribution to knowledge. A way of thinking of this, the point of the research, is as the response to the research questions. Indeed, in the now considerable numbers of doctoral defences I have attended, I can think of several where, when the examiners were not clear about the project’s original contribution to knowledge, they asked for it to be reformulated in terms of the research questions.
