How to Choose Research Questions

Good research questions give your dissertation a clear focus. They guide your topic, your preliminary research and your methodology, and every chapter should help answer them. This guide explains how to create your research questions, choose the right topic and test your ideas with preliminary research, with examples.

Create your research questions

All types of research require the same thing: create a research questions. So, secondary research also demands the same thing.
When you are an undergraduate, the instructors and supervisors can often provide you the specific research questions. It will be your first step to write a research paper, so they might give you some instructions as well.
But, when you are in the process of completing a masters dissertation, the students have to be creative by themselves. They have to come up with a research question on their own. It is mainly the process where the creativity and the inspiration of the student are assessed. So, your supervisor can just ask you to write a research paper on a topic of your own choice.

It can be sometimes devastating assignment due to the lack of research and writing skills. The students can also face dilemma of choosing a certain topic when they have so many ideas. When you have so many mixed ideas, you may loose focus and, when you have no idea, you will feel the tension of being empty mindedness.

Choose the Right Dissertation Topic

So, the first thing that you should do while conducting the secondary research is the choice of your topic. You will have to understand completely the area of study on which you are going to write a research paper.
There are many viable topics and there are some topics that require further research to contribute the body of knowledge.

The choice of dissertation topic mainly depends on the personal interest of the research. If you are in the business field, you may be interested in the administration, advertising and marketing of your business. If you are in the field of sociology, you may be interested to explore human rights, norms, and interpersonal communications in the society. If you are in the field of criminology, you can be attracted to write a research paper on the methods of eliminating crimes and the reasons for the cause of a crime. Similarly, if you are in the department of computer science, you may be interested to explore further regarding computer crimes and security.

In fact, there are many topics on which you can research and write an interesting paper. Sometimes, the professors can give you some hints as well during the lectures. You might also have read some previous research papers to have better ideas of topic selection. Now, when you are going to research, you should become the one person, research on the topic, and write on it. So, you can choose these topics and write on them.

Conduct a Preliminary Research

Now, when you have got a hold of your wide-ranging topic, you must be ready to do some research on it. You should not start doing complete research on a topic. But, you should prefer to read some previous articles and short books on the topic. Of course, you won’t be able to read a whole book in one day. So, you should not waste time on the selection of a big book, instead, you should search for articles written as reviews on research or you should tend to read the research papers of the previous students.
The big advantage of it will be the knowledge you will gain and some hints as well. The previous researchers couldn’t be able to complete the research or they may have left some plot holes in the research. You have to look for those mistakes and try to note them down. You can use these mistakes as a hypothesis in your research paper. Moreover, you can try to notice the gaps in the literature that can be filled by your research.
Right now, you can do some research on the topics that were left incomplete by the researchers.
The previous researchers may have left some information on the use of bitcoins as a source of trading. They might have not mentioned the development of market relations and advertise the business.
If the previous researchers were in the late centuries, they may not have mentioned the use of modern technology that causes the privacy of a person to go to the lowest point.
You can tend to write on the topic that causes the crime rate to go up and down in various eras of mankind.
This is the century of technology. Writing a research paper regarding the technology can give you some attractive audiences. Cybercrimes have been at the top these days. So, you can tend to write some things on this topic that can’t be written by other people.
Therefore, you don’t have to waste your time in deciding the hard topics that can attract people but, you will not be able to explain your thoughts on them.
Now, when you have decided on a topic, the other thing that you will have to do is to create a question for the people that can attract the audience toward your research paper.
You can develop the question or questions according to your topics and you have to take good care of the main points of a topic while doing so.

See our research objectives examples and our guide on how to find a research gap.

Examples of Research Questions

Why advertising and marketing are the most important tools to start and grow a business?
How the privacy of humans is not private in this modern era?
What are the ways to reduce crimes using the past criminal records?
Can the computer crimes stop?