research question
1Sunday, September 23, 2012 by Dongxia Wang
After I read the chapter 4 of Luker’s Salsa Dancing into the social science, I think I have better understanding about what research question is. Research question was introduced in first class and was mentioned many time, but I was not quite sure what research question is. According to Luker, research questions have four features: first, a research question proposes a set of relationship; second, understanding those relationships help us explain social life; third, a research question can be empirically and logically examined by a range of answers; last, the answer may advance the state of topic in the scholarly world.
To examine the research question, we need to include “something being explained and something explaining it” and a question mark at the end. Besides, you need to propose a set of relationships and a set of possible answers that can be used to judge one answer better than another.
Hopefully I can come up with my research question soon.
I totally agree – reading chapter 4 in Luker really helped me to solidify my understanding of a “research question” as something more formal than I have thought in the past. This also made me a little nervous though, because right now I’m definitely stuck on the “research interest” side of the fence. On one hand, I found it really liberating that she stresses the idea that you don’t need to have your research question fully developed to begin your research – I’ve never really tried to do a project that way before. But on the other hand, I’ve never tried to do a project without developing a research question first, and it’s a little daunting to try and wrap my head around what Luker is getting at here. I think my confusion probably comes from mixing up “research interest” and “research question”. I’m getting the feeling that maybe many of my previous projects lacked a fully developed “research question” as described here. The way I see it now is that you need a research question…but not right away…you can start with an “explanandum” (pg 55) as long as the development of a fully formed research question with the features you describe above is a central focus during your research. I really want to come up with my research question soon too, but I like how Luker is giving us a little bit of breathing room.
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