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Selecting Researchable
Topics and Questions
Chapter 4

Introduction
 Research Question
 Questions about one or more topics or concepts that
can be answered through research
 A research question can be about local or global
governments, individuals or organizations, and an
entire society

Introduction
 Research Topic
 A concept, subject or issue that can be studied
through research

Discussion - Question
 Create a research question about the social
impact of living through a natural disaster.
 Do you know people who lived through a
natural disaster such as a hurricane, a
tornado, a tsunami, or the like?
 In what ways do you think their lives have
changed?
 Do you think their experiences are typical or
unusual?

Introduction
 Hypothesis
 A testable statement about how two or more
variables are expected to be related to one another

Introduction
 Research question vs. Hypothesis
 A research question is similar to a hypothesis,
except that a hypothesis presents an expectation
about the way two or more variables are related,
but a research question does not
 Research projects that have explanatory or
evaluation purposes typically begin with one or more
hypotheses, most exploratory and some
descriptive projects start with a research question

Introduction
 Focal research
 “Studying Women’s Lives: Family Focus in
the 30s ”
 Hoffnung had personal experiences and
professional interests that set the stage for her
study of women’s lives
 Research provides basic information about the
social world and understandings that can be
applied to creating social policy

Quiz – Question 1
 Identify ethical issues from the focal research.
 How were the ethical issues handled?

Introduction
 Sources of research questions
 The selection of a research question is often
the result of many factors
 Personal interests, experiences, values, and
passions
 The desire to satisfy scientific curiosity
 Previous work -- or the lack of it -- on a topic
 The current political, economic, and social
climates
 Being able to get access to data
 Having a way to fund a study

Introduction
 Values and Science
 Value Free?
 Research in the 19th
and much of 20th
century science
was considered “value-free”
 Today, values, both social and personal, are part of all
human endeavors, including science
 Group interests and values can influence research,
especially influential during the creating and
evaluation of hypotheses
 Social and personal values are not necessarily bad
 The danger comes when scientists allow their values to introduce
biases into their work that distort the results of scientific
investigation

Introduction
 Personal Factors
 Personal interests often influence researchers’
specific research topics
 Having a strong personal interests can lead to
the willingness to the make the necessary
investment of time and energy
 Research by Hoffnung (2000)
 Personal interest in career and motherhood
influenced her work

Introduction
 Research and the Social, Political and
Economic World
 Change in society influences amount of
research on topics
 E.g. Gender, Sexual Orientation
 Before the 1970s, few studies focused on women, as
a result of the women's movement in the late 1960s
and early 70s, scholars began to study women and
their lives
 Current events focus attention: e.g. natural
disasters, swine flu, etc…

Introduction
 Research Funding
 “It is always difficult to raise money for social
science research; after all, it neither directly
saves thousands of lives nor enables one to
kills thousands of people” (Fischman et al.,
2004).
 Many research projects are funded through
private foundations, government agencies,
local and state institutions, or corporate
sponsors

Introduction
 Research Funding
 Funding research expresses a value choice
 The particular values associated with a specific
project affect funding as the appropriations
process for research is part of a larger political
process
 The availability of funding and economic
support can influence a study
 The questions asked
 The amount and kind of data collected
 The availability of the resulting research report

Developing a Researchable Question
 Researchable question
 A question that can be answered with
research that is feasible

Developing a Researchable
Question
 Transforming a research question to a researchable
question
 Narrow down the broad area of interest into something
that is manageable

• Example: Cell phones
 You cannot study everything connected to cell
phones
 You could study the effect of cell phones on family
relationships
 You cannot study all age groups, but you can study a
few
 You might not be able to study people in many
communities, but you might be able to study one or
two
 You would not be able to study dozens of behaviors
or attitudes that change overtime, but you could
study some current attitudes and behaviors
 In the community in which I live, how does cell phone
use affect parent-child relationships; more
specifically, how does the use of cell phones affect
parents’ and adolescents’ attempts to maintain and
resist parental authority?

Question
 Reviewing the Literature
 The process of searching for, reading,
summarizing, and synthesizing existing work
on a topic or the resulting written summary of
a search

Question
 Academic Sources
 To start a literature review, you will need to figure
out which literature or sources you want to search
 Books, articles, and government documents are the most
common sources
 Popular literature, including newspapers and magazines,
might be good sources of ideas, but academic journals will
be more useful in your literature review

 Keywords
 The terms used to search for sources in a literature
review
 With common keywords you will generate a large
number of sources – you can limit the search to title and
abstracts only
 You can use multiple keywords by including “and”
between terms

Question
• Reviewing the Literature
 Using the literature in a study
 Helps researcher to identify their own research
question or hypothesis
 Examine what previous researchers have used
 Provide context for your own work
 Provides an overview of the current state of
research and narrows your inquiry

 Practical matters
 Feasibility
 Whether it is practical to complete a study in
terms of access, time, and money

 Access
 The ability to obtain the information needed to
answer a research question

 Research costs
 All monetary expenditures needed for planning,
executing, and reporting research
 Although many research projects are grant
funded a grant is NOT necessary

 Time expenditures
 The time it takes to complete all activities of a
research project from the planning stage to the
final report

Summary
 Research questions can vary in scope and
purpose
 A review of the literature is essential
 Planning a study
 Time
 Money
 Access to data

Quiz – Question 2
We can expect that the interest in certain
research topics will change over time. This is
due to
a. different sources of funding.
b. changing political, social, and economic
elements.
c. changing personal factors.
d. all of the above
e. none of the above

Quiz – Question 3
 Some topics that may be interesting and important
but gaining access to the population may be very
difficult. Which of the following presents the
greatest obstacles?
a. College students living in a dormitory
b. Individuals who are members of a bowling league
c. Children who are hospitalized for minor illness
d. Individuals who are members of a secret cult
e. Singles who go on singles’ cruises

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