There are two key research types in academia: qualitative and quantitative one. In quantitative research writing experts make use of experimental designs in order to investigate the relationships between the variables. Qualitative research is more about individual approach and is mostly used in the humanities and the social sciences. When dealing with qualitative research studies, competent researchers collect info directly from their subject, using, as a rule, interviews or observations. But the question we’d like to focus your attention on today is how to word a research question? A couple of simple tips will guide you in the right direction.
How to Word a Research Question: Step I
First thing you need to cope with is to create a list of all the keywords that you can associate with the area of your interest. Let’s say, in case you happen to be passionate about development of online educational programs for the blind people, the keywords you should produce might be “online schools for blind people”, “education for blind people online”, “online distance learning for blind people”. Now it’s time to search for all the keywords you have mentioned in a scholarly literature database.
Phrasing a Research Question: Step II
Make sure to gather all the recently published articles on your topic in order to investigate them and get to the very core of the printed content. It is highly important to spend enough time on reading the discussion sections that are provided at the end of this or that article. As a rule, this section is used by professional researchers to reveal possible ways for the future developments in this field. Just base your decision on the suitability of the idea for the qualitative research. To indicate the suitability of the idea, make certain to focus your attention on the words like “describe”, “explain”, “explore” and “experience”. Leave behind all the ideas that are related to the words “effect” and “cause”. The thing is that these words are most fitting for the quantitative research. Present this idea in a different way, for example, as a question. For instance, if the project author states that “future research should be based on an investigation of distinctive points of successful and unsuccessful college students’ perceptions of the Internet learning environment”, feel free to state the idea as follows: “In what way do successful college students’ perceptions of the various Internet learning environments differ from the ones of unsuccessful college students?”.