write-a-research-question

name	write-a-research-question
category	school
description	Write a focused research question with a defined population, phenomenon, setting, scope, and evidence need. Use when a broad topic must become an answerable inquiry.

write-a-research-question

Turn curiosity into a question that evidence can actually answer.

When to use

• Use before a paper, project, experiment, review, interview study, or proposal.
• Do not imply a cause, population, or available evidence that has not been established.

Preconditions

• Record the assignment, audience, topic, constraints, deadline, and available methods.

Procedure

1. Write the broad topic and the decision or understanding the work should support.
2. Identify the population or material, phenomenon, context, period, and feasible evidence.
3. Draft open, comparative, descriptive, explanatory, or evaluative question variants.
4. Remove undefined terms, hidden assumptions, double questions, and predetermined answers.
5. Test each variant against scope, ethics, access, time, and evidence availability.
6. Select one primary question and list only necessary subquestions.
7. Ask a reader to paraphrase the question and revise any mismatch.

Failure plan

• If evidence access is uncertain, narrow the question or label the access dependency.
• If the question presumes a result, rewrite it neutrally.

Worked example

“How does remote work affect productivity?” becomes “How do software support agents in one company describe changes in interruption and case completion during the first six months of hybrid scheduling?”

Done

• A research-question document records the primary question, defined terms, scope, evidence need, and approved subquestions
• Feasibility, neutrality, ethics, access, and reader-paraphrase checks verify that the question is answerable