Introduction
Formulating search question clip (subtitles in English)
Now that you've selected a topic for your thesis or paper, it's important to come up with a good research question. See the book Research. This Is It! : Guidelines How to Design, Perform and Evaluate Quantitative and Qualitative Research. about formulating a good research question (with main question and sub-questions). The courses Conducting Research and Research Skills focus on helping you define your main question; here, we will focus primarily on finding reliable information.
Other books on research you can find through the website HAN Library.
Formulating a main question and sub-questions
An example of a main question:
What are the consequences of incorporating renewable energy into a municipality's energy policy?
Defining the main question or problem will help you determine your research question. You can focus on a single research question or a main question divided into several sub-questions. Continuing with the example above, you may decide on the following research question:
How does the municipality of Arnhem deal with renewable energy?
Examples of sub-questions would be:
What types of renewable energy are available?
What types of renewable energy are used in the municipality of Arnhem?
How do other municipalities use renewable energy sources?
What is the energy policy in the Netherlands?
Research framework
Now that you've chosen a topic and familiarised yourself with the subject matter, it's time to specify your research framework. This means defining the key concepts to give you a better idea of what to search for and to help you carry out a more targeted search.
A well-defined research question makes it much easier to search for information!
Try to develop a research question that consists of three key concepts. These often include the topic, the target group and the process. The research question can consist of a main question and several sub-questions. The example above uses the following key concepts:
topic: renewable energy
process: use
target group: the municipality of Arnhem
It is important that you formulate your research question as carefully as possible, because this increases the chance that you will find information relevant to answering your research question!
Open and closed questions
A research question can be open or closed. Closed research questions can usually be answered with yes, no or maybe. Open research questions tend to produce more concrete, factual information.
An example of a closed research question:
Do residents in the municipality of Arnhem use renewable energy?
Possible answers: yes, no, maybe, unsure.
An example of an open research question:
What types of renewable energy are used by residents of the municipality of Arnhem?
Possible answers: solar panels, wind energy, bio-energy, etc.
Did you formulate a good research question? Then go to developing key concepts