Exploding the research question

I have written about the idea of pulling apart the research question before (see here), but it is really important to ensure that all key components of a research question feeds into the project, and does not dilute the project (read about the dangers here). That includes the title, aims, objectives, literature review components, measurements, and the research outcomes. 

When we ask our research question, we need to sit back and consider all the elements we need to know in order to answer that question. That can be done by breaking our question down into the sub-questions so we can be sure we are asking the 'right' questions in order to answer our question; or in the language of Thompson and Penny: "exploding" out our research question (University of Southampton, 2020). 

By exploding the question, what I mean is that we blow our research question apart into the component elements. By doing that - pulling all of the elements from the question itself - it enables us to explore each component via our literature review, to then work out how we can measure each, to then compare our findings with the literature and to draw conclusions. We look at each element and track it through to its logical conclusion. All pieces are tied off; there are no loose ends. 

While the Thompson and Penny are talking about key words - word search via Google - in the clip below, the same principles apply. Watch the clip to see how we could reconsider our research question in order to evaluate all the terms that we have used in it (University of Southampton, 2020).

We sift our research question and trim it back to all the necessary components. Once we get our language accurate, by streamlining and simplifying our terms. This helps to make our research question more answerable, as well as directing what we need to search out in our literature, and where the research gap is to guide what we need to find.

I hope this helps!

Sam

References:

University of Southampton. (2020). Week 3.10: Exercise: 'exploding' out terms for searching. In E. Thompson, R. Penny (Eds.), Developing Your Research Project. FutureLearn. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/research-project/21/steps/735963