ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss the reasons why research questions are important, indicate traditional ways for formatting questions and articulate some of factors that guide the development of research questions. They also describe new ideas about methodologically sound ways to develop questions and provide specific guidance about and concrete examples for developing strong research questions. Research questions summarize what is unknown that requires further exploration. They require a clear, focused and concise question that forms the centre of the research. A good qualitative research question should be open rather than closed, exploratory rather than explanatory, focused on meaning, and a single phenomenon or concept, related to a specific research tradition, answerable, and worth answering. Generating research questions through problematization, in the sense of identifying and challenging the assumptions underlying existing theories, therefore appears to be a central ingredient in the development of more interesting and influential theories.
