English 102

Developing a good research question is a skill you will build through your academic career. You do not want a question that is so broad, you will not have enough time to research and write about it. An example of this is choosing to write a paper on "climate change". Will your research be on

• The causes to climate change?
• Solutions to climate change?
• The cost of the solutions of climate change?
• What people can do in their own homes to combat climate change?
• How climate change affects different populations? 

These are a lot of sub-topics to tackle in a 7-10 page paper. 

You also do not want a research question that could easily be looked up, or is answered by a single yes or no. An example of this is choosing to write a paper about the consumer price index. Up-to-date information about the consumer price index can be found here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/

A research question should involve analysis. This means you do not want to report on available information, but you want to analyze a single issue in order to lead to a conclusion.

So, your new research question could be:

How will climate change in the United States affect the consumer price index?

For more information about developing a good research question, take a look at this presentation: https://prezi.com/ic1koxu4qg-t/research-questions-the-good-and-the-not-so-good/

Research Question Checklist

Use these questions to help you evaluate your research question.

• Is your question something you care about or are interested in?
• Is the scope of your research question too broad? Is it too narrow?
• Can you answer your question just by looking it up? Is it a known fact or a yes/no question?
• Can you find enough information about your question to either support or contradict a position? 
• Is the scope of the question researchable given the timeframe of the assignment?
• What sources will help you? How will you access those sources? (For example, books, articles, podcasts, websites, interviews?)
• Has the question already been answered or resolved? 
• Can you get a clear, limited focus of the question, even if it is complicated? 
• Have I thought about my own assumptions and biases about the question? 
• Are the terms in my question well-defined? For example, are you researching all students? college students? community college students? first generation community college students? 
• What will the reader learn that they don't already know?