Doctoral Training Workshops
Research Design and Focus
Sue Oreszczyn and Julius Mugwagwa
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November 2014
SESSION AIMS
• To help you to explore and refine your
research questions
• To begin to think about research methods
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Where do research questions come from?
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• The published literature
• Challenging existing assumptions and
research Ideas and views of your colleagues
and supervisors
• The context of the research
• Your own professional practice and/or
circumstances
• From what you want the research to achieve
• Your funder
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How do you develop research questions?
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•Questioning: what you know; how do you know
this? are you sure about it? what other possibilities
exist?
•Free writing and word-doodling about your
topic: writing down what you know and what you
don't know
•Brainstorming: what do other people think? how
are their ideas different? what are they interested in
that you haven't thought about? Challenge opinions
and ask people to defend them
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Activity 1: Brainstorming your research
questions
1.
On the paper handed out write your research and topic area
2. one person collects up the sheets from your table and passes
them on to the table to your left
3. Each person on the next table takes a sheet, adds a question
that comes to mind about this research area/topic and then
passes it on to the person on their left
4. This person reads the questions, then adds a new question and
then passes the paper to the person on their left again to add
another question. Continue until everyone on the table has
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contributed
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Formulating Research Questions
Activity 2: What is your project about? What is the aim
and key questions?
What is the research question or hypothesis at the centre
of your research project?
First – individually - Write this down in the form of a
question (or questions)
Then check with your neighbour that they understand it
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WWWWW
How did you formulate your
question(s)? Did it involve:
What, Can….. ?
How many ….. ?
How do….?
Why ….. ?
Who ….. ?
Where….. ?
What if ….. ?
Others???
“I keep six honest servingmen
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and
Why and When
And How and Where and
Who”
Rudyard Kipling ‘Just So’
Stories
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Reformulating the question can help you
think through the different understandings
alternative approaches might produce
Activity 3
Rewrite your research question (or one of your
key questions) as a ‘what’; ‘how’; ‘why’;
‘who’ and ‘what if’?
e.g. a social health care project could be….
“What types of intermediary care services are likely to be
successful in reducing acute emergency hospital admissions?”
“How can intermediary care services reduce acute emergency
hospital admissions?”
“Why are existing services not preventing rising numbers of acute
emergency hospital admissions?”
What and who would be involved if patients’ needs for treatment10
after hip replacement operations were provided more at home?”
Criteria for good research questions
•
•
•
•
Be convertible into specific tasks
Have a comparative element
Specify when you have done enough
Specify the: Field of Study
- Limits the ‘population’ studied (e.g.
geographical area, industrial sector,
person type, topic boundary)
- Unit of analysis
- Measures used
• Have theoretical links with big questions in
the subject area as a whole.
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Turning research questions into tasks
How doable is this research question as it stands?
Remember the elephant
A real example:
Whether, how and to what extent have the three
supranational bodies (SADC, NEPAD and AU)
contributed to cross-national convergence of
biosafety regulatory systems in the SADC
region?
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Broad, overarching research question
Sub research questions
An example:
How do context specific institutional factors effect
innovative capabilities?
Sub-question 1: How has the network of actors in the innovative agribiotech sector evolved in a way that accommodates the particular
characteristics of the technology?
Sub-question 2: How do linkages between actors in the network
demonstrate the sustained use of institutional arrangements which
characterised the pre-transition NIS?
Sub-question 3: How does this existing network as it has evolved, show
difficulty in adapting to the regulatory environment created in the 13
country’s post accession phase?
Another example:
What changes in the legislative framework have
been proposed to assist in the development and
delivery of a pandemic influenza vaccine in
Canada?
Sub Q1) What institutional relationships between
upstream actors involved in vaccine testing and
production have been formed as a result of
changes in the legislative framework?
Sub Q2) Do such institutional relationships
contribute to complementarities and potentially
translate into improved production times?
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Research questions can be turned
into tasks
Focusing is a key task
Setting research boundaries is very important – it will affect
how widely you read
• You need to think through what information you
want to come out of the project
• You need to consider the original contribution
you will make
• You need to select appropriate research
methods
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Different sorts of questions
require different sorts of data
and levels of complexity
Activity 4: What Methods?
With the person sitting next to you consider:
• What are the tasks associated with your research
question?
• What data would you need for different questions?
• Where would you get it?
• How would you get it?
• How practical it is to gather your data with the time
and resources you have available
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Different kinds of research question
Type of question
Typical examples of research methods
What?
Surveys / structured interviews; archives;
‘administrative’ statistics, content analysis,
structured observation
How, Can?
Surveys; simple modelling; semi-structured
interviews
Case studies; experiment; semi-structured
Why, Where, Who? interview
What if?
Source:
output
operations
causality
Experiment; scenarios; multi-variable modelling;
unstructured / qualitative interviews, focus
modification
groups
Adapted from Chapter 1 (pp 27-48) of Thomas, A. and Mohan, G. (Eds) (2007): Research Skills for Policy
and Development: how to find out fast. London, Sage.
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Logics of inquiry
Different question formulations involve different forms and
logics of enquiry
Behind this can be different theoretical/philosophical
perspectives
(explored in Matthew’s session)
“It is the task of methodology to explicate methods of turning
observation into explanation, theory and data into theory.
Methodology is not just the science of technique or a brand of
theory, it is the link between technique and theory”.
“Just as we select a tennis racquet rather than a golf club to
play tennis because we have a prior conception of what the
game of tennis involves, so with social research.”
(Dave Wield – Doctoral Training Workshops founder)
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Three models for doing research
(Oreszczyn, 2000)
Researching on people. The researcher places
themselves outside the system of interest. The
researcher learns.
Eg. questionnaire surveys, scientific
observations.
The researcher places themselves within the
system for a short while and then leaves. The
researcher learns but the participants only do so
while the researcher is present.
Eg. Face to face semi-structured interviews
The researcher as co-researcher (the action
research model). The researcher place
themselves within the system and work with the
people. In this case learning is assumed to
continue once the researchers leaves the
system.
Eg. cooperative research, participatory research
techniques
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