- Important: In the small scale, the RQ has to be important to the student and their tutor. In the larger scale, it has to be important enough to attract an audience, funding etc,
- Novel: It's novel if there is not a proven strong answer to it.
- Before the analysis or data collection, existing research in the area must be understood well.
- Read widely to provide some evidence towards the answer and judge if the proposed RQs are original.
- Prototyping a research question – you must continually express your research question in a way that that allows you to critique, observe and refine it.
- The form that a research question takes is an argument, beginning with statement of knowledge and ending with a question.
- Is it researchable: The research question itself often implies the appropriate methods/requirements to use in addressing it.
- If you are comparing samples or populations, you need to use quantitative statistical claims which then affect your design.
- If you are investigating how some person makes sense of some scientific concept, you will need to talk to them, thereby making it qualitative in nature.
- Generating ideas for methods requires knowing what methods exist.
- Is RQ feasible:
- Is there a method that will produce the right data to answer it?
- Do you have the skills to undertake it?
- Do you have the time to do it?
- Do you have the resources to do it?
- Is RQ valid: Construct validity refers to the way which you collect your data, which includes measures and instruments.
- Internal validity: What Internal validity does for research is it makes the researcher's findings credible. This is done when an experiment shows a cordial connection between two data.
- Construct validity: The focus is on whether the test measured what it was intended to measure and whether the objective of conducting the test was satisfied.
- Content validity: It examines whether the test truly supports what it wants to test. This refers to the testing method to be used.
- Face validity: Whether the content or data of the study can truly represent the aims of the test and the data gathered is solid enough to conduct the test.
- Criterion validity: Criterion validity addresses whether the outcome of a test matches with the result of another test that has the same data.
- Externally valid means that your research will focus on a tiny percentage of the population or world but can it then be generalised.
- Most methods with high internal validity often have low external validity and vice versa.
- Coherence: When executing your research there should be little uncertainty about the design. Coherence is the thread of logic running through the entire study - the chain of reasoning or the argument.
- RQ checklist
- Focused on a single problem or issue
- Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
- Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
- Specific enough to answer thoroughly
- Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
