Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

Pose questions worth exploring
Thinking like a researcher; gathering sources
Research

Every research project starts with questions. Try using who, what, when, where, how, and why to form research questions for your project.

✵ Who is responsible for the contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan?

✵ What happens to the arts without public funding?

✵ How can nutritional food labels be redesigned so that they inform rather than confuse consumers?

✵ Why are boys diagnosed with attention deficit disorder more often than girls are?

See “How to enter a research conversation” on the next page for advice on choosing and developing a research question.

Choosing a focused question

If your initial question is too broad, given the length of the essay you plan to write, look for ways to narrow and focus your question.

Choosing a debatable question

Your research paper will be more interesting to both you and your audience if you ask a question that is open to debate, not a question that leads to a report or a list of facts. A why or how question most often leads to a researched argument and engages you and your readers in a debate with multiple perspectives.

Choosing a question grounded in evidence

For most college courses, the central argument of a research paper should be grounded in evidence, not in personal preferences or opinions. Your question should lead you to evidence, not to a defense of your beliefs.

WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE

Follow your curiosity, but think about your readers, too. Ask yourself: How will my research question engage readers? Why will readers think the question is worth asking? How might my research help readers understand a topic they care about? Frame your research question to show readers why it needs to be asked — and why the answer matters to them.

Testing your research question

Once you have a tentative research question, check to see that it is interesting, provocative, and flexible enough to pursue.

✵ Does your question allow you to research a topic that interests you?

✵ Does your question give you (and your readers) an opportunity to think about your topic in a new way?

✵ Is the question debatable and flexible enough to allow for many possible answers?

✵ Can you answer “So what?” (see 1c) to show why the question needs to be asked and why the answer is worth knowing?

WATCH

For more advice on choosing your research question, watch "How to ask a research question."

VIDEO

Watch "How to enter a research conversation" for tips on joining research conversations.

HOW TO

Enter a research conversation

A college research project asks you to be in conversation with writers and researchers who have studied your topic or with people who have lived your topic — responding to their ideas, experiences, and arguments and contributing your own insights to move the conversation forward. As you ask preliminary research questions, you may wonder where and how to step into a research conversation.

1. Identify the experts and ideas in the conversation. Ask: Who are the major writers and most influential people researching your topic? What are their credentials? What positions have they taken? How and why do the experts disagree?

2. Identify any gaps in the conversation. What is missing? Where are the gaps in the existing research? What questions haven’t been asked yet? What positions need to be challenged? What perspectives seem to be missing? (See the box on p. 354 for guidance on widening the research conversation.)

3. Try using sentence starters to help you find a point of entry.

o On one side of the debate is position X, and on the other side is Y, but there is a middle position: .

o The conventional view about the problem needs to be challenged because .

o Key details in this debate that have been overlooked are .

o Researchers have drawn conclusion X from the evidence, but one could also draw a different conclusion: .