ABSTRACT
This chapter justifies the value of research questions, identifies the sources of research questions and the kinds of research question that educational researchers may consider, for example: what, why, who, where, when, how, when, causal questions, descriptive, explanatory, exploratory, comparative, evaluative, normative, emancipatory, predictive. Caution is advocated in considering ‘value’ type questions, as these may be out of court for researchers. Advice is provided on devising, writing, scoping, focusing, operationalizing, organizing and evaluating research questions, and on deciding how many research questions to have. The issue is raised of whether to have one main research question with subsidiaries, or whether to have more than one main research question. The importance of making research questions answerable, focused, operationalized, relevant, specific and concrete is underlined, and many examples of research questions and hypotheses are provided. Finally, the chapter notes that some kinds of research may not have research questions in their early stages.
