Research Question free essay sample

The goal of this short paper is to show, why a clear research question is important for successful research and for a rigorous paper or thesis. In addition it outlines how a research question can be formalized in a sound form. Therefore the first chapter of this paper describes the different kinds of research questions and their characteristic. Chapter three focuses on the development process of a research question and chapter four concentrates on the research questions task and its impact on a research project. We conclude by summarizing how it impacts our thesis. . What is a research question? Generally a research question can be defined as a statement that identifies the phenomenon to be studied (Campbell et. al. , 1982). The research question usually consists of one or two sentences that state precisely what will be confirmed, refuted or generally answered. There are several ways to draw a research question. One possibility is to start from a broad idea and then narrow it down. In such cases, many teachers are led to believe that doing research papers is pointless if not futile. 2. 2 What topics lead to lifting: The most important step to prevent lifting is choosing the research question carefully. When the research question is not well formulated or when the student goes for information that can be found in encyclopedias, lifting becomes inevitable. e. g. â€Å" The History of Prince Islands† With a topic like this, our students are bound to come up with encyclopedic information. A prep school student, who is no expert in history, cannot interpret the history of Prince Islands using the sources he has found. He is going to find some books from the library, visit a few websites, find a few tourist brochures, put them together and write a paper, which is 90% plagiarized. e. g. â€Å"Environmental Pollution in the Mediterranean Region† Again such a topic is dangerous because 1. It is too broad as a topic, 2. It requires expert knowledge to interpret, 3. Our students are not informed enough to put together that kind of information intelligently. Therefore, the result is going to be quoting one or two writers without even acknowledging the sources. e. g. â€Å"The Komodo Monster† (which is my favorite example. ) What can a student do about such a topic apart from consulting some encyclopedias or natural history books? A student of mine presented information in such a way that it looked like he himself had done all the studies in Malaysia jungles, observing the hunting habits of this monstrous lizard. 3. The correct research question: Our students are novices in every way: They are novices in English language and they are also novices in academic life. Therefore, when they are assigned the question â€Å"What is X? † they will go to the library and gather information from whatever source they can find, put it together without putting it through any analytical process of thinking. The correct research question must be formulated so as to produce results that the students have to find out by themselves, or at least that they have to interpret intelligently and with sufficient amount of reasoning. Given their level of academic expertise, students must be pursuing research on topics that they are familiar with, or that they can study safely using their general knowledge plus some amount of reading. (The golden rule of (i+1) where â€Å"i† represents the student’s level of competence or information. ) The reading they do must be of the kind they can analyze and read critically with their level of knowledge and English. e. g. An oral history project to be done with the residents of one of the Prince Islands , for example with the storekeepers in Burgaz Ada , collecting their memories about the Turkish writer Sait Faik Abasiyanik. Prep school students can handle a project of this size and scope, with some reading about the life of S. F. Abasiyanik, studying some oral history interview techniques minimal knowledge of transcribing their interviews making sense of the data they have gathered. e. g. Environmental pollution in YADYOK building or on BU campus. setting the parameters of pollution choosing some unobtrusive methods such as interviewing the personnel in charge of waste removal from the YADYOK building interviewing the faculty secretary and the janitors, for instance, reading some articles for theoretical background reporting the results of their research students may come up with data showing the extent of the pollution we are producing here before our noses. B. Types of research The research project can be of two types Library research Qualitative research There are also quantitative methods of research; however, since our students do not possess the required knowledge of statistics that accompany that kind of research, we should make do with the two types mentioned above. B. 1. Library research: As discussed above library research, or in more modern form the Internet sources, usually takes the form of informative research, that is the student gathers information on a topic. A library or Internet research project should be carefully monitored by the teacher to prevent plagiarizing. A library research paper usually takes the form of the literature review paper. I. Purpose of the literature review paper The purpose of the literature review paper may be: State-of-the-art review: What information exists on the topic? What are the current views/ knowledge/theories/methods in the field? e. g. AIDS: What medical knowledge is there? What are the current methods of treatment? What drugs, medicine are used? What is the epidemiology of the disease? Historical review: This review aims at revealing the history of the development of a topic. e. g. Theories of second language learning from past to present Comparison of perspectives: the focus is on the comparison of theories, or approaches to an issue. e. g. Theories of second language learning compared and contrasted As discussed above, such a research process needs to be carefully monitored by the teacher. Starting from the submission of the research proposal, the teacher should emphasize the importance of student contribution and originality. During the stage of writing the paper, the importance of paraphrasing, summarizing and quoting from the original sources needs to be emphasized. Otherwise, students are bound to produce plagiarized papers. Instead, such literature review may be integrated into the research paper itself. Literature review is an integral part of every research paper, and preliminary reading constitutes the backbone of the research process. From choosing a topic to what method to use, from the interpretation of data to the interpretation of results, the researcher has to refer to data and scientific knowledge accumulated by other researchers in the field.