UNV 102: Korean Pop Culture (Jun)

After you have chosen a topic and done some brainstorming, it is time to develop your research question.  Although you will not include your research question in your paper, this is nonetheless a critical step because your thesis statement, one of the most important pieces of your research project, will answer your research question.  Your research question will also help you determine what is important to include in your project and when you have finished it.  

As you create your research question, remember issues that you identified in your brainstorming, concept mapping, and/or prewriting.  What specific aspect of your topic appealed to you?  What unique question do you want to seek answers to?

One of the most important things to keep in mind as you are creating your research question is that your question should be open-ended: the question should not be able to be answered with a simple "yes" or "no."  You want to create a question that requires exploration and analysis: one that will require you to use a variety of credible sources to answer.  See the chart below for examples of open and close-ended questions.

There are many types of research questions, so spend some time brainstorming how you want to approach your topic.  You want your question to be innovative: something that will grab your readers' attention and make them think about your topic in a new way.  For example, let's say you want to examine the practice of tattooing in the United States for your research project.  Below are three types of research questions that provided examples for this research topic.

• Descriptive questions: Questions that seek to describe or explain something.  Typically start with phrases like "What are?", "What is?", "How...?", and "What amount?".
  • Example: How does getting a tattoo impact American millennials as they enter the work force?
• Comparison questions: Questions that explore the relationship between variables.  They focus on the differences and similarities between these variables.
  • Example: How does the perception of tattooed individuals in the twenty-first century compare to perceptions in the early-twentieth century?
• Causal questions: Questions that examine whether one variable has impacted another.
  • Example: How have social changes impacted the prevalence of tattoos in America?