How to formulate Research Questions?
When you know your research topic well enough, half of your problems are solved because then you would be able to formulate the research questions easily. However, many times you encounter a subject that you know but a topic that is complicated making it difficult to form a research question. What can you do in such a scenario?
The best and easiest way to solve this problem is to dissect your topic, rip it apart into smaller words or phrases. So, you will have smaller componentsof a big research topic and these components can be used as a base for formulation of research questions.
Let us understand this by taking an example:
Suppose your topic is “Feasibility Study of Energy Produced from Waste CHP Project in Libya ”
Can you identify its components? Simple way is to separate the words on prepositions such as “of” and “in” in this case. So, our topic components would be:
- Feasibility Study
- Energy Production
- Waste from CHP
- Libya
Use each of these components to formulate the research questions. To do this, take following steps:
- Consider what you would like to understandabout the component
- Consider what datawould you like to collect
- Consider what your readerwould be interested to know about it
- While writing question for each keyword, try connectingit with others
- Ensure that whatever is your question, it is very specific
Feasibility Study:
- Understand - Why?
- Data - energy production from waste
- Reader - why is feasibility important?
- Connect - feasibility studyof energy productionfrom waste
- Specific Question - Why is feasibility studyimportant to conduct for energy production from waste?
Energy Production:
- Understand - How much?
- Data - energy production
- Reader - feasibility of production?
- Connect - Feasibility ofenergy production fromwaste in Libya
- Specific Question - How feasible is the process of production of energy from waste in Libya?
Waste from CHP
- Understand - what is CHP?
- Data - CHP method for energy production
- Reader - how energy is produced in CHP method?
- Connect - How is energy producedwith CHP?
- Specific Question - Are CHP methods effective for producing energy from the waste?
Now, you can list down your research questions:
- Why is feasibility study important to conduct for energy production from waste?
- How feasible is the process of production of energy from waste in Libya?
- Are CHP methods effective for producing energy from the waste?
Another method to generate research questions could be using questionslike - What? Why?
How? When? Read the topic see if you can use these to form questions.
Let’s explore this with another example:
Topic: Exploratory study of shifting of advertising expenses from traditional mass media to contemporary marketing communication methods
- What? What are contemporary marketing communication methods?
- Why? Why did advertising expenses shift from traditional mass media to contemporary methods of communication?
- How? How advertising budgets were used in traditional mass media?
- When? When did we see the changes in pattern of advertisement spend?
You can also use the question approach to explore and test multiple ideasand formulate questions out of them for which you may ask yourself -
- Do I know the subject well? If not then you may start with the basics like “What are governance models?” for a topic like “GOVERNANCE MODELS FOR ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE”.
What are important questions asked by researchers in this area? Explore others work to identify areas worth exploring under the study. For this, you need to understand the research questions of past researches or explore what they have covered. For instance, search “GOVERNANCE MODELS FOR ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE” in Google and you will find a few papers like:
- Cities, Climate Change and Multilevel Governance - OECD.org- review of current practices, opportunity for climate change policy
- Climate Change and Global Governance - International Institute - Challenges in governance due to climate change, issue of sustainable development
- National climate change governance - GSDRC- political economy for climate policy development, international governance model
- Urban policies addressing climate change.- complex institutional environment, review of governance initiatives
- What areas can be explored by you? Maybe you can formulate questions from here like
- Which governance initiatives have been successful in climate control?
- What current governance practices are used in climate policy development?
- What challenges are faced in governance due to climate change?
- Is there already sufficient research on the subject? Explore more of above
- Can we identify best practices in governance for climate control?
- Will the answer have significant impact on the field? Probably yes for best practices.
