The Research Question

One of the most important stages in the research process is formulating a research question. Both the type of question, and its significance, are important factors

It is usually a good idea to discuss your ideas for research questions with your research advisor or class instructor.

**Ask questions, and consider asking analyticalquestions**

Formulating your topic as a research question, rather than merely a statement can be a very useful step towards focusing the research project in general. It is common to begin with a broad topic, for instance:

“The international community’s response to piracy off the coast of Somalia.”

You could rephrase this as a descriptive question (This discussion is partly influenced by Benjamin Bloom’s 1956 Taxonomy of educational objectives.):

“What has been the international community’s response to piracy off the coast of Somalia?”

However, while descriptive questions are important, they are limited in how much they help us understand social phenomena. More interesting questions might include:

“Why is the international community responding to piracy off the coast of Somalia? What are some of the factors impacting their choice of response?”

These are examples of analytical questions, which requires you to identify causes, reasons, and motives for action. Other interesting questions could be questions that require a creative solution to the problem. A policy question would prescribe a response to a particular situation. For instance:

“How should the international community respond to piracy off the coast of Somalia?”

Yet other questions may require you to evaluate or make a judgment about a situation based on a set of criteria. For instance:

“Has the international community’s response to Somali piracy been effective?”

Focusing the research question

You can easily see how selecting a research question can be useful in determining the direction and scope of a project. Stating a research question can help us clarfiy exactly what will be researched. We know that we are interested in piracy near Somalia in the questions mentioned above. We also know that we are interested in understanding the role of the international community. One decision we might make is to narrow the focus even further. After all, the “international community” can be quite broad, consisting of international organizations, such as the United Nations, various country governments, major shipping companies that ship goods through the region, and insurance companies that insure those goods. So we might want to clarify our question even further. The last question could be:

“Has the United States’ response to Somali piracy been effective?”

This is a clear, focused question that could form the basis of a student research paper. Which is not to say that it will be an easy question to answer. For one thing, this type of question requires us to define “effective”. Defining and measuring such core concepts is a the topic of a later section in this website. See “Concepts and Measurement”.

What makes a good question?

The types of questions that might be valuable have been the subject of some debate and discussion amongst political scientists. King, Keohane and Verba’s 1994 book, cited below, suggests possible criteria to use in deciding on a topic and question (See especially their discussion that begins on page 14). That criteria includes two general approaches:

1. Choose a question that is important right now in the world; or

2. Choose a question that is important to the scholarly literature.

These are not mutually exclusive categories. A great question can often accomplish both. But consider carefully who you want your audience to be, and how you can make your project important to that audience.

The Quick Guide

STEP 1: What type of question are you asking?	Examples	Resource
Explanatory	Why did Obama win the Presidency in 2008? Why is Ghana a successful democracy?	Most of the website is geared towards helping students answer precisely these questions. Some good places to start:Formulating and Extracting Hypotheses, Causality [will be added soon]
Descriptive	What is the nature of nationalism in Russia?	One of your main tasks will be to Collect Data.
Policy	What should be the United States’ Middle East policy? Should the United States support the creation of a World Environmental Organization?	Policy Papers
Political Theory	Is equality or freedom more important to democracy? What difference does it make in reading ancient political theory for contemporary purposes that it was written in the context of Greek city states or the Roman Empire rather than a system of large sovereign states?	Political Theory