Category: LRNT 522

Your research question provides a path to follow when you start to conduct your research and describes the desired outcomes of your study. This question, in combination with your chosen approach, helps to narrow the focus of your topic of interest and guides the structure of how you choose and analyze data.

To start, ensure that your topic can be studied. Ask yourself if there is enough research available to draw from or if you will need to design a study to collect the needed data.  From there, you develop your question to narrow your focus. For example, if your research will use a quantitative approach, then your question will focus on the relationships between the variables in your study data.

Next, ensure that your question is clear and simple. Clear, simple questions help to focus the discussion and to provide various viewpoints to consider. A key component of effective questions is that they help to narrow your topic. Here are some resources that help you to narrow your topic so that you build effective research questions:

1. A great video which explores the use of mind maps when breaking down your main area of focus into sub-topics.
2. Another resource that I would recommend can be found here. It describes both narrowing your focus and developing clear, focused and simple research questions.
3. Lastly, the RRU Writing Centre has lots of resources on writing thesis statements. One resource I found especially helpful was Research Questions and Hypothesis by John Creswell.

How can you decide which type of research to include when you are working to answer a research question? Is one better than the other? Read on to review a short overview of what I think are the core differences between the two.

New or existing data?

Primary research involves gathering new information directly from a participant group, thereby working to generate new data. Secondary research involves gathering data from existing research and does not generate new data. In comparison, primary research is based on raw data, whereas secondary research uses existing information that has already been analyzed and interpreted.

Data sources:

Primary is based on raw data, whereas secondary is information that is analyzed and interpreted from original sources. Primary research can include any originally made artefact, such as diaries, photographs, questionnaires, observations or interviews, whereas secondary research focuses on the findings of other researchers. Primary research does not include review articles, as they are summaries of existing research literature or articles which analyze existing data through meta-analysis.

Which should you use?

Primary research is conducted if no existing data exists for your research question, leading you to design a study to create the data you seek. Usually researchers of primary data usually have some preexisting information about the subject, which has made them curious and causes them to explore further. The data collected in primary research is specific to the needs of the researcher, whereas in secondary, it may or may not be specific to the needs of the researcher. The amount of time and cost invested is a key factor to consider when choosing which research you will use.  Primary research tends to be very involved and so has highs cost and is time consuming.  With secondary research, the costs are lower and the time commitment is shorter, which may be appealing if the researcher aims to gather a broad understanding on a topic.

Ethical approval required?

Since human subjects may be directly impacted by the study, primary research often requires ethical approval. Conversely, secondary research does not involve interacting directly with human subjects, ethical approval is not required.

When deciding which type of research to use, perhaps you can consider completing a systematic literature review to explore existing thoughts and theories related to your subject.  Then, if your question remains unanswered, you can build out a plan to conduct primary research of your own to gather the data required.

There are various approaches to consider when completing research, including quantitative, qualitative and mixed method. Depending on the purpose of the research, coupled with considerations of capacity, research design could follow a purely exploratory approach, a purely confirmatory approach, or one which incorporates both approaches to varying degrees, known as a mixed method approach.

Quantitative research uses a confirmatory approach, where the researcher states a hypothesis, often based on existing theory. Statistical analysis helps to interpret the measured numerical data and tests the hypothesis. Based on objective interpretation of the data collected, the researcher would then either accept or reject their hypothesis.  The results, gathered through structured interviews, questionnaires and tests, are often generalized to broader situations.

The confirmatory, top-down approach, is deductive, as it starts with a general theory and then tests specific data. If your research aimed to answer a cause-and-effect relationship, such as the hypothesis that industry members with more than five years of experience value on-going education less than those with less than five years of experience, then a confirmatory approach may be a good fit.

The exploratory approach, used in qualitative research works to make meaning of the experiences of people in their environment and also follows three stages. Here, the researcher starts by making an observation based on something they’ve noticed, which they then study, searching for patterns in the data they collect. The data, collected through unstructured interviews or focus groups using open-ended questions, is comprised of detailed descriptions of events, people or observed behaviours and often includes direct quotations from research participants. The result is a tentative conclusion or generalization about the patterns uncovered, which is narrow in scope and is not generally applied to broad situations.

Also known as a bottom-up approach, the exploratory method is inductive, as it starts with an observation and works to consider the patterns that result from further study. Instead of testing an existing hypothesis, like with quantitative research, qualitative research leads to the development of a theory. Qualitative research requires the researcher to collect and interpret data collected from participants, so subjectivity can play a role.  If your research aims to explore the observation that those from baby-boomer and millennial generations have different views of on-going education in their industry, then an exploratory approach may be favoured.

As with most things in life, it can be challenging to choose just one of the above methods. Some researchers may choose to use both exploratory and confirmatory approaches, known as mixed method research. In the example of understanding the perceived value of on-going industry education above, perhaps a researcher starts by employing qualitative research, using unstructured individual interviews and open-ended questions. The information uncovered could then lead the researcher to decide to then employ a quantitative approach to gather feedback from a larger sample size of industry members. Using a mixed method approach would allow the researcher to leverage key observations uncovered through the qualitative interviews to build a meaningful, quantifiable on-line survey that is distributed to a much wider audience.

Source:  Johnson, B., & Christensen, L. (2008). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches. Sage.