Evaluate your questions - Moving from a topic to a question to a working hypothesis - Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

Evaluate your questions
Moving from a topic to a question to a working hypothesis
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

Not all answers are equally useful, so evaluate your questions and scrap those that are unlikely to yield interesting answers. Reconsider when the following is true.

1. You can answer the question too easily.

You can look it up: What masks are used in Navajo dances?

You can summarize a source: What does Fisher say about masks and fears?

2. You can't find good evidence to support the answer.

No relevant facts exist: Are Mayan masks modeled on space aliens?

The question is based on preference or taste: Are Balinese or Mayan masks more beautiful?

You must read too many sources: How are masks made? You don't want to plow through countless reports to find the best evidence (this usually results from a question that's too broad).

You can't get the sources that your readers think are crucial. In even moderately advanced projects, you'll be expected to work with the best sources available; for a thesis and dissertation, they're essential. If you can't obtain those sources, find another question.

3. You can't plausibly disprove the answer.

The answer seems self-evident because the evidence overwhelmingly favors one answer. How important are masks in Inuit culture? The answer is obvious: Very. If you can't imagine disproving a claim, then proving it is pointless. (On the other hand, world-class reputations have been won by those who questioned a claim that seemed self-evidently true—for instance, that the sun went around the earth—and dared to disprove it.)

Don't reject a question because you think someone must already have asked it. Until you know, pursue its answer as if you asked first. Even if someone has answered it, you might come up with a better answer or at least one with a new slant. In fact, in the humanities and social sciences the best questions usually have more than one good answer. You can also organize your project around comparing and contrasting competing answers and supporting the best one (see 6.2.5).

The point is to find a question that you want to answer. Too many students, both graduate and undergraduate, think that the aim of education is to memorize settled answers to someone else's questions. It is not. It is to learn to find your own answers to your own questions. To do that, you must learn to wonder about things, to let them puzzle you, particularly about things that seem most commonplace.