Good Research Questions

  • Looking at previous research is key to help refine the research question:
    • Decide whether to replicate previous results, conduct similar studies, or launch new research.
  • Theory is important to guide the questions that you ask as well as understand and interpret the results that you get.
    • Questions can be set up to support or refute theory, or theory can be used as a base for you research.
  • Good research questions have:
    • Empirically testable, scientific-based questions.
    • Specific topics of research.
    • Some question involved to link the two variables.
    • A specific question that can be evaluated
  • Questions can be:
    • Exploratory, which ask whether there is a relationship between two variables.
    • Descriptive, which attempts to describe a relationship between variables based on cause and effect.
    • Explanatory, which seek to explain why something happens by relating variables.

    Examples:

  • Good Questions
    • Exploratory: Has interest in professional baseball decreased over the past 10 years?
    • Descriptive: Does income have an effect on baseball viewership?
    • Explanatory: Does Bourdeau's theory of the habitus of sport participation apply to baseball, with younger people more likely to participate than older people based on the "vulgar" nature of the sport?
  • Bad questions

    Bad question: Should participation in sports be required in grade school?
    Problem: This is not a scientific question, it cannot be tested empirically.
    Better question: Would requiring grade school participation in sports improve the problem of obesity in our society?

Bad question: Baseball in Central America.
Problem: This is simply a topic, not a research question.
Better question: How does baseball effect the culture of Central America?

Bad question: Violence and sports participation.
Problem: These are simply two variables, there must be a question to link them.
Better question: Does sports participation cause a decrease in youth violence?

Bad question: What can be done to decrease child obesity?
Problem: The question is still too vague: it needs to be more specific.
Better question: Will incentive programs for sports programs in middle school cause children to be more active?

Click here to begin the walk-through examples: Example 1 Example 2