Developing

a Research Question

College Reading and Writing Foundations

Outcomes & Objectives

Learning Outcomes paired with this Lesson

• Compose a variety of texts with clearly developed and focused topics and claims, logically organized ideas, and reasoning and evidence to justify the author’s stance.
• Locate, read, analyze, evaluate, select, integrate, and synthesize information from credible sources.

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Lesson Objectives

• Brainstorm questions using investigative questions
• Focus on a specific topic within a broader topic and/or theme
• Understand how a research question leads to a claim/thesis or argument about my subject.

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Activity 1, Part I (5 minutes)

1. Take a few moments to list several topic ideas. These may be drawn from a previous course reading, or a previous activity.
2. Determine a couple that are most interesting to you (5 min. max).

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Tip: Try to list topics you have a connection to. Topics that you find interesting and have a connection to are often easier to write about.

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Activity 1, Part II–Reflect (2 minutes)

Review your writing from Part I.

• What made you interested in those ideas?
• Who else would be interested in those issues? 

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You will use one of these topics for Activity 2. 

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Activity 2, Part I (5 minutes)

Suppose you had chosen the topic of “U.S. race relations.” Using key investigative terms (“who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” and “how”), formulate questions about this topic.

Example investigative questions:

• What is "race"?
• What causes racial tensions?
• Who is affected by racial tensions?
• Why should we care about race relationships?
• When do racial tensions happen/have racial tensions been happening?
• Where are racial tensions most evident?
• How are race relations still a problem 60 years after the Civil Rights Movements in the U.S.?

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Activity 2, Part II–Reflect (2 minutes)

Review your writing from Part I and answer the following questions:

• To which kinds of questions are you most drawn?
• Do any of these questions seem to lead you closer to a subject on which you’d like to think further?

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Overview

Research is usually prompted by a problem. This problem causes researchers to seek information from multiple credible sources as a way to find solutions to that problem. Most important problems are complex and have multiple stakeholders (those people who are interested, impacted, or invested in the issue) and perspectives from which they can be viewed.

Research can be seen as a quest for the truth, or truths, about a situation. Researchers’ paths to solutions can be defined by the research questions they ask. These questions limit the information they’re seeking, define what kinds of data or information they will be using, and possibly indicate what solution they are aiming for, if that is appropriate.

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Activity 3 (15 minutes)

For this activity you will develop a topic into a research question. Example topic: Global warming.

STEP 1: Write versions of the investigative questions about one of your (at least) two chosen topics: What is it? Who is involved? Why is it important? When and where is it important/does it happen/cause a problem? How is it related to other issues of importance? Write these out for a couple of different possible topics.

Example questions: What is global warming? What causes global warming? Who can stop global warming? Who is impacted by global warming? Why should we care about global warming? When is global warming going to happen/has been happening/will happen? Where does it cause a problem?

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Activity 3 (continued)

STEP 2: Read the investigative questions you’ve written. Do these help you decide what you find most interesting (which topic and/or what questions)? Are you trying to get more information, find out about the history of the issue, discover policies about it? The way you answer this question may lead you to a variety of kinds of arguments:

• For definition essays, sometimes it helps to ask if you understand the terms of the topic you’ve chosen. Example: What is “global warming” when you use the phrase in your work? Why is this your chosen definition?
• For policy essays, sometimes it helps to write a question using “should” or “would” about your topic. Example: What should people do about global warming?
• It may help to think about cause and effect, too. Example: What makes us believe that human-made carbon emissions are responsible for global warming? Or, what are the implications of not solving global warming in the coming years?
• For expository essays, sometimes your goal is primarily to demonstrate that you understand a facet of the issue others may not have known about in your own words. Example: One of the biggest contributors to global warming was the carbon produced over a hundred years ago, from the Industrial Revolution.

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Activity 3 (continued)

STEP 3: Narrow your questions:

• Consider your writing situation, especially your purpose, role and your readers’ purposes, interests, values, and beliefs.
• Replace vague words and phrases with more specific, targeted ones. You might have to do this after you have done some research on the conversation about your topic. In the example below, the population is specified, and "global warming" is replaced with a specific action that contributes to the reduction of the complex problem "global warming."
• One easy way to narrow your topic is to imagine how this issue affects you, and people like you.

Vague example: What should people do about global warming?

Narrowed, focused example: What can college students do to lower their use of fossil fuels?

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Activity 3 (reflection: 5 minutes)

Take 5 minutes to reflect on your current research questions. Where should you start your research? What kind(s) of expertise and/or data do you need to answer and/or refine your questions? What discipline(s) are you working in? What kinds of sources will you use/read for more information?  Consider working from the following checklist to confirm that your topic is narrow enough:

• Put your question into a Google or similar web search engine and see what comes up.
• Do the answers seem like they are reasonable starting points for you to write a paper, or are they too big for your understanding given the time you have to work, or too big for the space you have to write?
• If the answers are reasonable for someone with your background to write on for the purposes of this course, then you have a good topic. But if the answers are too big for the purposes of this assignment, go back and be more specific with some of your terms, and then repeat this process. Consider using Wikipedia or Google to hone in on keywords associated with your argument to help you as well.

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References & Resources

• “Argument.” The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UNC College of Arts & Sciences, 2021.
• “Argumentative Purposes.” Excelsior Online Writing Lab, 2021.
• Hewett, Beth L. “From Topic to Presentation: Making Choices to Develop your Writing.” Writing Spaces, 2010, pp. 59–81.

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