As discussed in previous chapters, research projects usually grow out of a question or area of interest. Do you like watching movies? Do you wonder what you and your peers might do with your degrees once you’ve finished university? Do you wonder how many people on your campus have been arrested, how many have been the victims of crime, or how many know that people of colour are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system? Have you ever felt that you were treated differently at work because of your gender or that you’ve been stopped by police because of your race or ethnicity? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you may have just the sort of intellectual curiosity that social scientists use as the basis for their research projects.

While questions or observations about the world around you are an important starting point for developing social science research projects, topics in themselves need to be turned into questions that can be answered through scientific research. This chapter focuses on how to develop and evaluate empirical research questions based on five features of a good research question. We will also discuss the importance of assessing the feasibility of your research question in terms of turning it into a research study.

Topics

In research, a topic is an area of interest or a subject the researcher might be interested in learning more about. Topics often come from some observation or question that arises from researchers’ own lives. They are also linked to our worldview or the paradigm we ascribe to. Whether it’s thinking about a question you’ve had for some time, identifying a subject related to a course you’ve taken, or looking at patterns in your everyday life, you can probably identify a topic you might be interested in studying.

A topic is not yet a research question. Before turning the topic into a researchable question, you should examine your own thoughts and feelings about the topic. While many researchers probably skip this step, examining your own relationship to the topic can help identify biases and other issues that might make it more difficult to study the topic. Of course, just because you feel strongly about a topic does not mean you should not study it. Sometimes, the best topics of research are those you feel strongly about. What better way to stay motivated than to study something you care about? Although you may have strong opinions about your topic, you might be open to having those ideas challenged. In fact, studying a topic that is relevant to your own life can be very rewarding as you learn new perspectives that might never have occurred to you before collecting data on the topic.

Whether or not you feel strongly about your topic, you will also want to consider what you already know about it. Take some time to think about what you know about your topic from all possible sources. Thinking about what you already know helps identify any biases you may have while also helping to frame a question about your topic.

Research Questions

Transforming a topic into a research question takes a lot of patience, especially if it’s your first time conducting a research project. While a topic is an area or subject of interest, a research question is a question that can be answered using scientific knowledge. Sometimes, you might develop a research question based on what other researchers have already found about a topic, as you learn through your review of the academic literature. Social scientific theories can also guide the process of transforming a topic into a research question. Other times, you might rely on what you already know about a topic to form a research question.

Exploring what other researchers have found about your topic is an important step as a researcher transforms their topic into a research question, refines that question, and begins to form project ideas. Many topics can be very broad, and an understanding of the general state of knowledge about a topic can help you narrow your focus for your own research question. For instance, let’s say your topic is restorative justice, which on its own is a very broad topic area with a wealth of academic research. You conduct an initial literature review  (a process that is examined in more detail in chapter 5) by searching for and synthesizing academic journal articles and books that have been published about restorative justice. You find research on restorative justice for youth, Indigenous restorative justice, restorative justice practices around the world, the impact of restorative justice for participants in the process, and the potential of restorative justice for responding to specific offences. Reviewing the literature sparks your interest in how restorative justice practices are utilized with youth engaged in illicit substance use, and you come up with the research question: What are the benefits and challenges of restorative justice programs for youth engaged in illicit substance use?

Researchers conduct literature reviews at many points during the research process, and developing a research question is one of these points.  One of the drawbacks (or joys, depending on your perspective) of being a researcher in the 21st century is that we can do much of our work without ever leaving our comfortable spaces by taking advantage of the wide range of online resources available.

Ethical and Empirical Questions

When it comes to research questions, social scientists are best equipped to address empirical questions (those that can be answered by real experience in the real world) as opposed to ethical questions (those that people have moral opinions about and may not be answerable in reference to the real world). While we as social scientists may have ethical goals, such as social justice, research projects ask empirical questions that help support those ethical goals.

For example, say you want to research the penalties for sexual assault. Your original research question is: “Why are prison sentences for sexual assault so much lower than the penalty for drug possession?” While this is an interesting question that connects to patriarchy and stereotypes about substance use, it is more of an ethical question, not an empirical one. How could you answer that question by gathering data about people in the real world? What would an answer to that question even look like? As you engage with the research literature on the topic of sexual assault in the criminal justice system, you refine your question to have a more empirical focus. Your new question is: “How do sentences for sexual assault, and the court’s rationale for these sentences, differ across Canada?” This new question is still centred on your topic and the possible ethics of differential sentences, but it also allows for the gathering and analysis of real-world empirical information. Our job as social science researchers is to gather facts about social and justice issues, not to judge or determine morality.

As you may have guessed, this research question is also connected to your overarching frame of reference as a researcher. As discussed in chapter 2 and chapter 3, our interests are linked to the paradigm we orient ourselves within, and the theoretical framework we are working from is linked to that paradigm. The research question above about sentencing for sexual assault is no exception: it is critical (paradigmatically) and feminist (theoretically) in its orientation, ultimately highlighting your concern around patriarchal practices in the court system and gender equality. If we approached the same topic from an Indigenous paradigm, we may ask, “Do sentences for sexual assault, and the court’s rationale for these sentences, differ across Canada when the victim is Indigenous versus Caucasian and, if so, are the sentences typically higher or lower?” This question would highlight both patriarchal and colonial practices in the court system. So, as you can see, these research questions do not just appear out of thin air!

Evaluating Your Research Question

As a researcher, once you’ve drafted a research question, you must evaluate the strength of the research question before moving on with your research project. The failure to do so could result in a lot of wasted time and resources if you later determine that your research methods do not match your research question or that your research plan won’t help you answer your actual research question. So, what makes a good research question? This section discusses the main criteria to consider when making this evaluation:

1. Is it a question?
2. Is it clearly focused?
3. Can it be answered with “yes” or “no”?
4. Does it have more than one plausible answer?
5. What other relationships among concepts are there?

1. Is it a Question?

A research question is generally written in the form of a question. It may seem obvious, but when working with topics, many students forget to develop an actual question or set of questions from their topic. Students may offer a statement, such as “I’m researching youth restorative justice” (which is a topic) or “Restorative justice is beneficial for youth because it keeps them out of prison” (which is a hypothesis). Such statements can be good starting places, but they should be worked into a question that can be addressed. For instance, rather than assuming that restorative justice programs have benefits, the question could be posed as “What do youth engaged in restorative justice programs perceive as the benefits of these programs, if any?” This question invites investigation as opposed to simply identifying a topic, making a value-laden statement, or stating at the outset how you expect your concepts to relate to one another.

You might be wondering about the difference between a research question and a hypothesis, which we introduced to you very briefly in chapter 3. While the two are related, they are not the same; research questions inform hypotheses within a study. A research question is simply that—a question that guides and directs the research project. On the other hand, a hypothesis sets out how we expect our concepts to be related to one another, and it is typically presented in an “if, then” format. More specifically, a hypothesis is “a testable statement about the relationship between two concepts,” variables, or ideas (Carr, Boyle, Cornwell, Correll, Crosnoe, Freese, & Waters, 2021, p. 53). Let’s return to the hypothesis proposed above: restorative justice is beneficial for youth because it keeps them out of prison. Or, written differently: if youth participate in restorative justice, then they are less likely to re-offend and be re-sentenced to prison.  These statements propose an association between the concept of restorative justice and avoiding prison. The hypothesis also proposes the nature of the relationship between the concepts: that participating in restorative justice will decrease the number of youths being sentenced to incarceration. Importantly, we can never conclusively prove a hypothesis; we can only state that the findings support or do not support the statement. This is because there is always a margin of error we have to account for in our research analysis; our samples are not identical to the population, and so we have to acknowledge the possibility of error in our findings. Generally, we find hypotheses in studies that are deductive and quantitative in nature and less so in qualitative and inductive-oriented research.

2. Is it Clearly Focused?

A good research question is also one that is well-focused and centres on a particular aspect of the topic the researcher is trying to understand. Returning to the example of sexual assault sentences above, let’s say that the initial research question was: “Why are sexual assault sentences the way they are?” This question may be centred on a particular offence and aspect of the criminal justice system, but it is too general and broad to be answerable. Instead, the refined research question “How do sentences for sexual assault, and the court’s rationale for these sentences, differ across Canada?” is clearly focused on a particular offence (sexual assault), the sentences (a specific aspect of the criminal justice system), the court’s rationale (a specific context), and differences across Canada (a defined geographic area). Although this may seem complicated when the research question is broken down like this, the clear focus improves the feasibility of the research by placing defined parameters around it. Adding the timeframe of this inquiry adds even more focus, and this is typically a desirable feature of a research question. In this example, we could add “in the last 5 years” to the end of the question to narrow the focus even more.   Another way you can think about becoming more focused in the construction of your research question is by answering the following: who/what are you wanting to examine?; when do you want to examine it/them?; where do you want to examine it/them?

It can be challenging to be focused and specific. Even when you think you have your research question narrowed sufficiently, a bit more clarity may still be needed depending on the terms you use. Table 4.1 offers a few “watch words” that indicate you may need to be a bit more specific about the concepts in your research question.

3. Can it Be Answered with “Yes” or “No”?

Questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” do not make for good research questions in part because they limit the insights a research project might provide on a given topic. For example, you could ask, “Do youth support the use of restorative justice?” After you discovered your yes or no answer, you would have nothing more to say on the topic. Instead, asking, “What do youth participating in restorative justice programs perceive as the benefits and challenges of such programs?” creates a much more interesting question that allows more nuanced insights to emerge about students’ opinions on restorative justice than a simple yes or no question.

4. Does it Have More than one Plausible Answer?

A good research question should have more than one plausible answer. For example, the research question above “What do youth participating in restorative justice programs perceive as the benefits and challenges of such programs?” has more than one answer. The youth will likely have varying opinions about the programs and their participation. These perspectives may vary based on age, gender, offence, amount of family support, location, availability of programs, and numerous other variables, allowing for the fifth criterion of a strong research question.

5. What other Possible Relationships among Concepts are There?

There may be other concepts and relationships among concepts that are relevant in our study that we may want to incorporate into our research question. Let’s return to the question about sexual assault sentences and the rationale for these sentences. If, for example, the victim was Indigenous, perhaps we should also examine the race of the offender to see if sentences vary based on the intra- (offender of same race) and inter- (offender of a different race) racial relationship between the victim and offender.

Table 4.2 offers a few sample questions with proposed alternative wording to get you thinking about how to assess and refine your own research question. Notice how the refined alternative questions mention the temporal and geographic boundaries of the inquiry – i.e., they narrow the focus to a time frame and area, adding a much-needed level of specificity that was missing in the previous iteration.

Next Steps

Transforming topics into questions often leads researchers to have a few potential research questions that they want to begin studying right away. However, even if they’ve identified a brilliant research question, they still need to plan their study design, which we’ll discuss more in the next chapters. For now, we’ll focus on assessing the feasibility of the projects for which we have now created a research question.

We learned about ethics and the process of Research Ethics Board review in chapter 1. Beyond ethics, researchers must consider some other practical matters before beginning a research project. In research, feasibility refers to the chances that a study can actually be conducted, with particular attention to accessing the target population and securing adequate resources to conduct the study.

First, researchers must consider their ability to access the populations they want to study. For example, let’s say you’re interested in studying the day-to-day experiences of maximum-security prisoners. This sounds fascinating, but unless you plan to commit a crime that lands you in a maximum-security prison, it may be nearly impossible to gain access to this population. Similar issues of feasibility arise when researchers want to study groups involved in crime, law enforcement organizations, courtroom actors, and corrections officials. While many researchers have studied these groups, it can take months or even years to connect with people in these populations.

Second, research requires resources such as time and money. In terms of time, a researcher’s time frame for conducting research may constrain how they conduct their study. The time a researcher has to complete their work may depend on many factors. Professionally, a project may need to be completed by a certain date to be counted toward job performance reviews or promotion. As a student, you may be required to complete your project by the end of the academic term. Employees or interns in political settings may need to conduct research within even shorter time spans to inform policymakers’ decisions on important social issues. All these time constraints shape what sort of research a person can conduct.

Research often requires money. Your ideal research topic might require you to live on a chartered sailboat in the Bahamas for a few years, but unless you have unlimited funding, it will be difficult to make that happen. Similarly, if you want to study differences in lawyers’ interactions with clients in Canada and Australia, you will need money to pay for your travel, housing, food, and other research expenses while overseas. Researchers conducting survey research have to consider the costs associated with subscriptions to high-quality online surveying platforms or, in the case of mailing surveys, the postage as well as the time needed to print surveys, address envelopes, and deliver them to the post office. Interviewing people face to face may require that you offer your research participants a cup of coffee or glass of lemonade while you speak with them. And someone has to pay for the drinks.

In addition to the costs mentioned above, research that requires recruiting participants must factor in the time and money for creating and distributing flyers, emails, and other materials designed to encourage people to participate in the project. Due to these kinds of resource needs, researchers often secure funding in the form of grants from their universities and/or provincial or federal governments.

In sum, feasibility is always a factor when deciding what, where, when, and how to conduct research. Issues of accessing target populations and the availability of resources such as time and money play a major part in assessing the likelihood of being able to conduct a study in the way the researcher envisions. If a researcher reflects upon their research question and determines it is unlikely that they would be able to conduct a study to answer this question, they can then return to their initial topic of interest, review the literature once again, and draft a new research question that may lead to a more feasible study.

Conclusion

The paradigm we orient ourselves with and the theories we gravitate to are connected, as are the research questions that flow from this foundation. In this chapter, we discuss how to transform our interests and topics into researchable questions and how to veer away from asking ethical questions and move towards empirical ones. We also identify the key features that comprise a strong research question and offer ideas on how to become more focused and specific about our inquiries. Lastly, we address the issue of feasibility and highlight the reality that research takes time and money and sometimes we have to alter our questions in order to design a project that can actually be conducted. This speaks to the reality that research does not happen in a vacuum and there are many considerations that we as criminological researchers must make in order to engage in the types of exciting projects our discipline invites.

References

Carr, D., Boyle, E. H., Cornwell, B., Correll, S., Crosnoe, R., Freese, J., & Waters, M. C. (2021). The art and science of social research (2nd ed). W. W. Norton & Company.

Adaptation Statements

• Scientific Inquiry in Social Work. Open Social Work Education by Matthew DeCarlo, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
• Principles of Sociological Inquiry by Amy Blackstone, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, except where otherwise noted.