Your class materials will provide a much more thorough explanation of how to develop an empirical research project. On this page, for the purpose of providing context for the rest of this research guide, we will discuss the basics of how to define a research topic. Generally speaking, when moving from a broad topic of interest to a researchable topic, you must identify:
In the social sciences, a research question often asks how some issue, policy or event impacts / affects something, like a group of people in a certain region or (historically) during a certain time period. Some examples include:
Often, the researcher starts with a broad question, like the examples above, and refines them through exploratory research.
The characteristics of a good research question are very discipline-specific. We can generalize, however, that all good research questions are:
Watch this brief video to learn more:
Identifying a research gap means you are looking for an area or angle on your topic that has been explored very little or not at all. You can add your unique knowledge you gained through analysis of evidence / data to the conversation. Research gaps might be empirical or theoretical. Perhaps, in the research you read, explanations or relationships lack sufficient causality, or some alternative explanation is needed. Empirically, perhaps the research is limited spatiotemporally, etc.
Be persistent / explore thoroughly- You can't reliably identify research gaps if you haven't explored your topic thoroughly. For that reason, the most basic strategy to identify research gaps is to explore your research topic broadly and gather a wide range of scholarly articles on it. After reading a few articles, you may think you have found an interesting or unique angle, but if you don't narrow your search for articles specifically on that angle, you might miss existing research that already explored it.
Think critically - Critically read the articles you find while exploring your topic. Ask yourself questions like: are there additional data that should be analyzed; a different critical theory to apply; a different population to explore; a different methodology to apply?
Pay attention to "suggestion for future research" - Most scholarly articles contain a section called Discussion or Future Research. These sections may suggest research gaps. Scan for phrases like, "additional study is needed in..." or "a weakness of our study is..." or "the limitations of our study..."
Read meta-analyses, annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, and systematic reviews on your topic. These types of papers provide a thorough overview of the previous research on the topic, as well as examining the trends and changes over a long period of time
The type of methodology you will use for your research depends greatly on your research question. For now, let's define what is meant by qualitative, quantitative and mix-methods research.
Qualitative research focuses on relationships between people or texts. It seeks to to understand people's beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behavior, and interactions and describe them in a non-numeric way. For example, an anthropologist interested in LGBTQ+ people's lives might spend a large amount of time living in a social group, speaking with the people in that group and analyzing how that group related to the LGBTQ+ community.
Quantitative research emphasizes objective measurements and the statistical, mathematical, or numerical analysis of data collected through direct experiments, observation of subjects, polls, questionnaires, and surveys, or by manipulating preexisting numerical data using computational techniques.
The goal in conducting quantitative research study is to determine the relationship between one thing [an independent variable] and another [a dependent or outcome variable] within a population.
Mixed-methods research combines elements of both qualitative and quantitative research design. The anthropologist from our earlier example might supplement their observations of the social group by conducting surveys. Analyzing observations is qualitative research. Analyzing the numeric results of surveys is quantitative research.
A thesis or theory statement may be seen in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research.
A thesis statement is a short, direct sentence that summarizes the main point or claim of an essay or research paper. It is developed, supported, and explained in the body of the essay or research paper by means of examples and evidence.
A good thesis statement:
Hypotheses are typically used in quantitative research.
A hypothesis is a formal statement that predicts a measurable relationship between two or more variables. A well stated, researchable hypothesis:
For example, a potential hypothesis for the research question "How does globalization impact national sovereignty?" could be: "Globalization leads to a gradual erosion of national sovereignty (DV) as increased economic interdependence (IV) and the rise of international institutions (IV) limit a nation's ability to independently regulate its economy and political affairs." This hypothesis answers the research question (How does globalization impact national sovereignty? It erodes it.). It also states a relationship between the dependent variable - national sovereignty - and two independent variables that impact national sovereignty - economic interdependence and international institutions. Let's look more closely at dependent and independent variables.
To properly formulate a hypothesis, it is helpful to understand the different types of variables that it must operationalize. In political science, variables could be a policy, event, activity, etc. Using the sample hypothesis, "Globalization leads to a gradual erosion of national sovereignty (DV) as increased economic interdependence (IV) and the rise of international institutions (IV) limit a nation's ability to independently regulate its economy and political affairs." the:
--Dependent variable: is the target; who or what is affected - in this case, national sovereignty, which must be quantifiable in some way.
--Independent variable: is who or what will affect the target; the variable the researcher will manipulate to see if it will make the dependent variable change - in this case, increased economic interdependence AND the influence of international institutions.
Sometimes, we also see control variable(s): variables that must be held constant to ensure that the independent variable is the only variable affecting the dependent variable.
Operationalization is the process of turning abstract concepts into measurable observations. Operationalization allows the researcher to define their variables in a way that permits accurate measurement. In the example above, to prove or disprove this hypothesis, the research will have to determine valid ways to quantify or measure numerically the dependent variable, "national sovereignty" and the independent variables, "economic interdependence" and "the influence of international institutions."
