Effective research takes time. This page will help students:
If you are unsure about what is expected about your assignment, consult with your instructor.
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Before setting out to complete an assignment, get to know what is required. Parts of the assignment description students should look for include:
Assignment descriptions also provide useful context or background information that will help you with identifying a topic.
Source: Niagara College Libraries + Learning Commons Information Skills Online Handbook
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This process helps give you some background information about your topic prior to formulating your research question.
Once a topic has been selected and you have performed some background research, you can start developing a research question.
Research questions "help writers focus their research by providing a path through the research and writing process. The specificity of a well-developed research question helps writers avoid the 'all-about' paper and work toward supporting a specific, arguable thesis" (The Writing Center).
A good research question will require you to analyze an issue or problem. Developing a research question that asks about how or why tends to be more useful than a research question that asks what or describe questions (Monash University).
You have already asked yourself the 5Ws in step a (Why, Who, What, Where, and When), next ask yourself:
| Clarity | Focused | Complexity |
| Bad: "Why are social networking sites harmful? | Bad: "What is the effect on the environment from global warming?" | Bad: "How are doctors addressing diabetes in the U.S.?" |
| Good: "How are online users experiencing or addressing privacy issues on social networking sites like Facebook?" | Good: "How is glacial melting affecting penguins in Antarctica?" | Good: "What are common traits of those suffering from diabetes in America, and how can these commonalities be used to aid the medical community in the prevention of the disease?" |
Sample Research Questions from Indiana University Library
Content reproduced/adapted from MIT.edu under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License
Content reproduced/adapted from under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License
It will be easier to find information if you define your topic and identify the key concepts.
Step A) Take a look at your research question and ask yourself, what are the main concepts? These main concepts will become your keywords.
Example:
The research question:
Keywords that describe this topic could include:
From this example, we have highlighted just the key words:
We have left out all other words and punctuation (do, have, a, than, their, ?) from our key words.
Step B) Think of all the words, or synonyms, you can use to describe these keywords. By definition, synonyms are words that have a similar meaning and are interchangeable. To make this process easier, use a thesaurus to find synonyms.
To show this process, we have mapped out several synonyms and related terms to our three main terms we pulled from our research question. Related terms are a little different from synonyms as they do not always mean the exact same thing as the keywords, but are useful for broadening the scope of your search. We have also broken several terms into narrower and broad terms.
Step C) Now that we have identified our main keywords, synonyms and related terms, as well as narrower and broad terms, we can start our background research by searching on the web or in library databases for resources related to our topic.
Often, a simple Google search will help you define your topic further.
Example:
Typing in our research question: Do today's youth have a better life than their parents? into the search bar of Google, we come across a very helpful resource put out by Pew Research Center.
[click on above image of a Google search to be sent to the Google results page]
Using resources such as the report from Pew Research Center, we can flesh out more of our research question with new knowledge of the factors that make life different between generations, including education level, income and wealth, housing, etc.
Step D) Research is an ever-evolving, iterative process. After searching, you may find information that informs your research question and/or resulting search terms. At this point, you may wish to revisit the first two steps: Determining Keywords and Brainstorming Search Terms.
Alternatively, you may also choose to adapt your research question into a thesis to fit this new information.
Example:
Our original research question was:
Based on some of our introductory research we conducted in Step C, it may be more valuable to narrow our research question to focus on a more specific topic, such as access to education. We can rework our research question into a thesis to reflect these changes: