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

Practical questions: what should we do?
What research is and yow researchers think about it
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

You pose a different kind of question—call it a practical one—when your answer to So what? tells readers what to do to change or fix some troublesome or at least improvable situation:

1. I am working on the topic of X,

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

  3. so that I can tell readers what to do to fix/improve Z.

You would explain your work on a practical question like this:

I'm working on the topic of communicating risk effectively.

Why?

Because I want to find out what psychological factors cause ordinary Americans to exaggerate their personal risk from a terrorist attack.

So what if you do?

Then I can tell the government how to counteract those factors when they communicate with the public about the real risk of terrorism.

Practical questions are most common outside the academic world, especially in business. In academic fields such as health care and engineering, researchers sometimes ask practical questions, but more often they ask a third kind of question that's neither purely practical nor purely conceptual: call it an applied research question.