Questions vs Thesis statements

Questions and thesis statements both have the same purpose, which is to state what you are writing about and restrict your paper to a manageable topic.

• A question is phrased as a problem to solve
• A thesis statement is phrased as a tentative answer, but both sides of the question must still be considered in your research

Badke, WB 2014, Research strategies : finding your way through the information fog, iUniverse, Bloomington IN.

Example

Question - Does eating chocolate improve cognitive function?

Thesis statement - Eating chocolate may improve cognitive function.

You may find it helps to think in terms of answering a question at the beginning of your research to avoid unintentionally biasing yourself toward one answer.

Preliminary research

Good research questions don't usually appear out of thin air.  You need to do some preliminary reading to understand the range of questions and answers relating to a topic before you can identify possible areas to focus on. 

You also need to consider the scope of your project, and make sure it is realistic given your timeframe and word count.

• Is there enough research to review?
  If there is not enough written on your topic to review, you will need to widen your scope, or change your question.
   
• Is there too much?
  If there is too much literature on your topic to review, you will have to focus more tightly on one aspect.

These decisions cannot be made before you start.  Only reading about the issues that are being discussed in the existing academic literature will give you enough background knowledge to choose an achievable focus for your review.

Review articles

One way to get an overview of the body of research on your topic is to look for published review articles.

What's the difference between a primary research article and a review article?

• A primary research article is a description of a single study, investigation or experiment.
• A review article is a summary and analysis of several other studies, investigations, and experiments.

Review articles summarise the current state of understanding on a topic.

They can help you find:

• the main people working in an area of research
• recent advances and discoveries
• important primary research papers in the field
• significant gaps in the research
• current debates
• suggestions about where research might go next

IMPORTANT: please resist the temptation to use a published review article as a direct template for your own review, because this makes it very easy to unintentionally plagiarise!

Generating ideas

Creating a mind map of topics from your preliminary reading can be a great way to generate ideas for possible research questions.  Mind mapping will allow you to:

• See an overview of your topic
• Identify connections between ideas and details
• Group emerging themes together (colour coding works well for this)

If you prefer to create a digital mind map, there are loads of software options to choose form (try Coggle, Xmind, Freeplane, MindMeister, Ayoa, or MindNode), but I strongly urge you to consider using the traditional pen and paper method. 

Why go old-school?

Drawing your mind map by hand gives you complete freedom to concentrate on your ideas (and the relationships between them) without being distracted by trying to make software do what you want it to.

Your hand drawn mind map may not look pretty, but remember that this is a thinking tool.  It isn't supposed to be a work of art.

Refining your question

When you have done some preliminary reading and brainstorming, you will probably find that you have several ideas that could be turned into focused research questions.  One way to do this is the tried-and-true 5W+H method:

Question frameworks

There are also several frameworks that have been developed to help researchers structure effective questions and clarify main concepts.  They are often used in Evidence Based Practice methodology for the health sciences, but some can also be useful in other disciplines.

Even when your question does not fit perfectly into any one framework, using part of one to clarify your thinking can help tremendously.

Here are some of the most common frameworks: