Three kinds of questions that researchers ask - Conceptual questions: what should we think? - What research is and yow researchers think about it - 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

Three kinds of questions that researchers ask - Conceptual questions: what should we think?
What research is and yow researchers think about it
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

Experienced researchers also know that different readers expect them to ask and answer different kinds of questions. The most common questions in academic work are conceptual. The ones most common in the professions are practical.

1.2.1 Conceptual questions: what should we think?

A question is conceptual when your answer to So what? doesn't tell readers what to do, but helps them understand some issue:

1. I am working on the topic of X,

 2. because I want to find out how/why/whether Y, (So what if you do?)

  3. so that I can help others understand how/why/whether Z.

If you were explaining your research, the conversation might go like this:

I'm working on the topic of risk evaluation.

Why?

Because I want to find out how ordinary people evaluate the risk that they will be hurt by terrorism.

So what if you do?

Once I do, we might better understand the bigger question of how emotional and rational factors interact to influence the way ordinary thinkers think about risk.

Researchers in the humanities and the social and natural sciences work mostly on conceptual questions, such as How did Shakespeare's political environment influence his plays? What caused the extinction of most large North American mammals? What are comets made of? The answers to those questions don't tell us how to change the world, but they do help us understand it better.

To be sure, the answer to a conceptual question often turns out to be unexpectedly relevant to solving a practical problem. And before we can solve any important practical problem, we usually must do conceptual research to understand it better. But in most of the academic world, the primary aim of most researchers is only to improve our understanding.