Write a Research Question

One way to develop your research question is to move from a broad topic area to a specific focused discussion. 

1. Start with a broad topic that you want to explore.
2. Focus on a specific problem or issue within that topic.
3. Identify the gap in research to justify the need for your project.
   • What are researchers not looking at, or what is still unknown?
   • What has yet to be researched?
4. Formulate potential research questions.
5. Refine your main research question.
6. Draft subsidiary questions (if applicable).

You can download the Developing a Research Question + Worksheet to use as a guide while working through this section.

Start with a broad topic that you want to explore. To define your topic, identify the keywords that your paper or research project addresses. If your topic is too broad, your paper will not have a clear focus, and you will end up reading too many sources and trying to include too much information. To narrow your research topic, be more specific.

Consider the following criteria to narrow your topic:

• Category (e.g., group of people, a specific theory, a particular species, etc.)
• Time (e.g., historical period, life stage, etc.)
• Location (e.g., city, region of the brain, etc.)
• Issue (e.g., perspective, point of view, concern, etc.)

For additional support on narrowing the focus of your topic, refer to the Four Steps to Narrow Your Research Topic and Asking Questions to Explore Your Topic.

Consider a specific problem, situation, condition, or challenge within your research area that needs to be improved, modified, or addressed.

Your problem may address a social, practical, or theoretical issue that is important to study, and its investigation should help you develop new understandings, concepts, or improvements; analyze patterns, trends, or characteristics; or evaluate an impact, effect, or solution. Make sure your problem is specific enough to be feasible for the scope of your project and timeline.

Problems can be categorized in the following ways:

• Exploratory
• Descriptive
• Analytical
• Evaluative
• Comparative
• Causal/Correlational

Here are some examples of research problems:

• Declining population of a species
• High rates of a specific illness
• Misperceptions of an historical event
• Inefficient tools, technologies, or processes
• Limited resources or support for a community

Identify the gap in research to justify the need for your project.

A gap in research refers to what is unknown or unresolved about your research problem in the academic community. To identify the gap that your project will address, consider what other researchers have not explored about your research problem. Although other researchers may be exploring the same problem, they may be using different methods, working with different populations, or investigating a different aspect of the problem.

Ask questions to identify the gap

• What are researchers not looking at, or what is still unknown?
• What has yet to be researched?
• What is unresolved? 
• Does the research focus only on causes, not effects – or only on effects, not causes?
• Have previous models been inaccurate?
• Is the scope of the problem unknown? Does it affect other processes, mechanisms, species, tissues, etc.?
• Are the required conditions unknown? Do other conditions result in the same problem?
• Is the solution to the problem unknown? What prevents the problem from occurring? What solves the problem once it occurs?

Frame the gap in your writing

• “The research is incomplete in assessing…”
• “Researchers in the field disagree about…”
• “This lack of understanding about…”
• “Researchers are undecided about whether/when/what/why/how…”
• “The performance of X method across Y remains an open research challenge...”

Brainstorm as many questions as you can think of that relate to your research topic, problem, and gap.  In most cases, questions that result in only “yes” or “no” answers may limit your research possibilities. Try starting questions with what, why, when, where, who, and how. Refer to this Question Chart for guidance on how these different words lead to different types of investigation.

Be sure to narrow the scope and focus of your topic and research, so that it is appropriate for the length of the paper you are writing and is manageable to complete with your research timeframe.

There are other important strategies for narrowing your research question: PICO(T) and FINER.

PICO(T)

PICO(T) is one framework that you can use to ensure you have a specific research question.

• Population
• Intervention
• Comparisons
• Outcomes
• Time

A related framework is PIE, which is often used in quantitative research studies in Health Sciences. University of Toronto provides a resource for PIE.

FINER

Another framework you can use to refine your research question is the FINER framework.

• Feasible
  • Do you have the resources (e.g., time, funding, equipment, personnel) to answer this research question?
• Interesting
  • Is this research question of interest to you, collaborators, researchers in your field, funding agencies, people affected by the research, and other stakeholders? How and why?
• Novel
  • Have you conducted a thorough literature review to confirm that your question is novel? Is this something that hasn’t been done before, or that hasn’t been done successfully before?
• Ethical
  • Do you need to complete a research ethics application for your project? Can you revise your question to ensure that it is ethical?
• Relevant
  • Is your research timely and needed? What might be the impact of your research for your stakeholders or invested audience?

Elsevier provides detailed guidance on the FINER criteria in Navigating the Research Landscape: A Deep Dive into the FINER Method.

Depending on the nature of your project, you may need to draft subsidiary research questions. Your main research question is the overarching question that your project will answer. Subsidiary research questions (sometimes called secondary questions) help answer parts of your main research question. When you brainstorm questions as part of writing your main research question, you may come up with subsidiary questions.

You can use these subsidiary questions to organize your literature searches, create sub-headings for your specific chapters or sections, and guide your reader through the development of your research project. You can organize them in different ways (e.g., chronological order, narrative development, order of significance).