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Generating Good Research Questions

18 November, 2015 - 17:39

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  1. Describe some common sources of research ideas and generate research ideas using those sources.
  2. Describe some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
  3. Explain what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can appear mysterious—even magical—with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, psychological research on creativity has shown that it is neither as mysterious nor as magical as it appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993). 1 This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.