A researchable question is one that can be answered (or begin to be answered) in a single study.
It is specific enough to include the variables and population you will be studying.
Your research question should move the scholarly conversation further.
The language in your research question should match the terminology used by researchers of the same topic and the measures you will use to study them.
Use your research question to organize your writing and determine whether to include studies in your proposal.
If you're conducting a research study on the student population at Xavier, make sure your research question applies to Xavier students.
Check out the podcast summary or read the text below for more a more in depth look at formulating a research question.
Correct scope of research question = easier to write research proposal.
Too Broad: How do adverse childhood events impact adulthood?
Researchable at Xavier: How do adverse childhood events correlate with internalizing or externalizing problems in adults at an HBCU considering the variables of socioeconomic status and religious beliefs?
Your research question(s) organizes your entire research proposal. It drives the keywords you use to search for sources, determines the evaluation criteria for choosing sources to include, and provides a structure for writing your actual paper. The better your research question, the easier it is to find a cohesive set of sources to write your literature review.
Finding research questions for a research proposal is about finding just the right amount of specificity. Having a broad topic idea at first provides you direction, but as you gain knowledge on your topic, you’ll want to narrow it down to a researchable level question, meaning you can add new evidence to the conversation with a single study. It's a little different than argumentative essays you may have written before, where you’re making an argument for or against something and the sources you collect are meant to back up your argument. For a psychology research proposal, the scope of your research question(s) should be furthering the topic just one piece of evidence further.
Try to keep in mind that no one research study can "prove" anything. With the scientific method, a single study is one piece of evidence pointing towards a conclusion that is reached by repeating the results over many years in many contexts. For example, a single, or even multiple, research studies conducted using college students (which many studies are due to the convenience of the participants for professors or students conducting research, see the WEIRD page) does not have generalizable results for anyone outside that college.
One study that could further the evidence would be to conduct the same experiment with a wider range of adult ages outside of a college. Another could look at whether the results remain consistent or change with children, or people of different socio-economic statuses, or people with different educational backgrounds. Every research study brings the results one step closer to confidence (not proof). That is, if the results are consistent across the board; however, consistent results are less common than you might think. More often, mixed or different results add complexity to the question and lead to yet more research studies and further questions.
A broad research question might be - how do adverse childhood events impact adulthood? You can't begin to answer this question with one research study. There’s just too many variables and ways adults could be impacted. A broad question also puts a ton of work on you as an author to synthesize sources from many areas into one cohesive literature review. Save yourself work on writing the paper by choosing a narrower research question. Examples of researchable level questions on this topic include:
*Notice how these research questions include the specific variables the study is exploring.
How did I come up with the research questions in the previous section? They are all from published research studies from PsycInfo. An effective way to find a research question is to choose one the research studies you've already found and take their research one step further.
But how do you choose which article to base it on? Interest could be one factor. Another is how well you understand the article. Another could be asking whether you're more interested in how variables are correlated or the best way to solve the problems identified with intervention strategies. These are two different research directions. Once you choose a direction, it will help you refine your research question. Here are examples of research questions furthering the evidence.
Original Research Question: Do parents' adverse childhood events increase the child’s risk of experiencing emotional neglect?
Further Research Question: Do specific types of adverse childhood events increase the child’s risk of experiencing emotional neglect more than others?
Original Research Question: To what extent is the association between exposure to adverse childhood events (ACEs) and having chronic pain in adolescents explained by sleep disturbance?
Further Research Question: Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy aimed at improving sleep decrease the experience of chronic pain in adults who have experienced adverse childhood events?
You can also get ideas from the discussion/conclusion section of the research study you're focusing on. Look for where the authors talk about future research that is needed. Then check if the research has been done since the article was published by searching again with keywords take from the new research question.
You can also get research question ideas from meta-analyses on your research topic. The nice thing about this method is that you already know there is enough research on the topic to fill a cohesive and organized literature review. See How to Identify Source Types for more information on Meta-analyses.
To successfully conduct a research study using Xavier students, you will need to choose a research question that applies to a wide range of students at Xavier. Remember that the population you're drawing from are specifically psychology students at Xavier with access to the survey software. Imagine your research topic were about birth mortality rates for black women and their babies, you'd need a population of female students who have had children. You probably won't get enough students with experience birthing children to have a study with statistical significance even though the topic is extremely important. Or maybe you're interested in asexuality. Only 1-2% of the population identifies as asexual, so you'll need to think carefully about how to design a study involving that topic. You may need to shift from studying asexuality directly to studying how much people know about it.
Think about your research question and the Xavier student population. Will you have enough participants to answer it?
If not, is there a way to keep the same broad topic but tweak your research question to study something the student population at Xavier would accommodate?