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Research Tutorial

What is a Research Question?

A research question is a clear, specific, and answerable question that serves as the foundation for your assignment. The question guides your research and keeps your assignment focused. 

How or Why

A good research question usually starts with 'How' or 'Why' because these types of questions are more open ended and require more analysis.

The Question Should Be

  • Debatable. It should not be a yes/no question. There should be more than one possible answer.
  • Defensible. You need to be able to find evidence to support the question and your argument. 
  • Not so simple that it can be answered by a quick Google search. 

Your research question may change as you conduct your research. That's okay! Research is not a linear process and you can adapt your research question as you go. 

Not Too Broad.

If your question is too broad, there will be too much information on the topic. This may result in the final assignment being unfocused, irrelevant, or not containing enough analysis. 

  • Example: How does mental illness impact law enforcement?

Not Too Narrow

If your question is too narrow, you won’t find enough research or evidence to answer the question. 

  • Example: How does shift length impact female police officers working in Vancouver, BC?

The Perfect Research Question

... does not exist!

The best research question depends on your assignment requirements. It should be a question that is researchable, answerable, and interesting to you, since you will be spending time learning about this topic.

The length of your assignment may also determine your research question. A longer paper might require a more complicated research question, while a shorter paper might not have space to explore every aspect of a topic. 

Here's a tip

Background Research
It can be helpful to conduct background research while developing a research question. Background research helps identify ideas or themes related to a general topic. This information can be used to narrow your topic into a research question.
Review the Background Research page for more help.

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Unless otherwise noted, this guide is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).