 Hi, my name is Tracy Takahama-Spinoza and this is a video on how to formulate a great research question. So to do this we're going to take three different steps. First we're going to define our terms, right? What do we mean by a great research question? So what are characteristics of a great research question? Then I want to give you a handful of examples and then we're going to look at framing structure. How can you design or create or format phrasing of a very strong research question? So step number one in developing a great research question is first ask yourself, you know, what do I want to know? What is it that I really want to know? And this does not mean stating the topic. Do you want to know how the brain learns to read or do you want to know why some kids are more motivated than others for different topics? Or do you want to know the chemical processes of motivation in the brain or the neural networks that are associated with it? I mean, what is it that you really want to know? And that's a harder question than it sounds. So just take a second right now and think about a specific topic between math or language, or is it about motivation, or is it about memory skills, or or attention spans, or executive functions, or social-emotional learning. Think of those broader topics, but then just ask yourself this simple question. Within that topic, what do you want to know? And once you know what you want to know, let's think about some of the characteristics of great research questions. There's a bunch of them here. We're going to look at them one by one pretty quickly. All of these are important characteristics of great research questions. And there is no great research question that doesn't have multiple characteristics included in them, but some of them might be more important to you than others. So try to prioritize that as we go through this list. Basically, we know that great research questions are precise. They do not leave you hanging. We have to use wording and a clear unit of analysis to be able to do that. For example, I want to know the influence of poverty on intelligence as measured by standardized tests or something like that, right? Become more precise in the wording. We also know the great research questions are innovative. They don't rehash the same thing over and over and over again, asking something like, I want to know the effects of technology on education. Number one, way too broad. Number two, it's been asked a million times. If you make that question maybe a little more precise, you could in turn come up with something more innovative. Look for something that's a new idea. Don't keep rehashing the same, same old ideas. We also know the great research questions are specific. They do not make the reader guess about what the angle is or what it is that you are trying to get at. And this is often done by identifying a who or a what or a when or a where or a how or a why, right? So specific in the sense of understanding the role of educational apps in foreign language acquisition in Kyoto for third graders or something like that. That really helps us narrow in on a clear and specific focus. Great research questions are also measurable. They can be tested. We can have data and see whether or not something has changed based on an intervention, an experiment or a view of the data. And this includes qualitative questions as well. If you already established that there's more reports of bullying, for example, in your school, you might want to understand why bullying has increased in your school. And this can be measured in total number of incidents reported or can be measured by general entries of students. So even qualitative indicators are measurable and we do have to be able to measure that to show change during our research process. Great research questions are also attainable. It's like something you're actually able to do. And this has multiple levels. One could be you'd like to know how having an additional, you know, 5000 English teachers in the early years might change the learning outcomes of a country in terms of executive functions. Okay, all that sounds super cool. Probably a really great idea. But is it attainable? I mean, do I have the time? Do I have the resources to be able to do this? So asking a question that is manageable means that it's attainable. It is something that you, you individually, personally can do. It's not just a great idea somebody or some government should do, but it's something that you actually can manage. And this is very much attached to this idea that it's realistic. Sometimes you might take on something so huge that it's not manageable within the timeframe that you have. And this gives birth to the saying, you know, it's never done, it's just do. So sometimes you have to curb, you know, your enthusiasm down to a very specific question that you think, that's just a simple thing. The truth of the matter is even the smallest questions really involve a whole lot of deep learning and thinking. One way to help you with that is that if you have any kind of a research question that uses the word and be very careful because you're probably asking two different research questions. So be very careful on that count. The realistic also means in terms of scope. So if you're saying, if you want to do an international comparative study, okay, that's really cool. But do you have the means to do that? Do you have the time to be able to gather all that data and compare all that information? So make sure it's a manageable question in terms of being realistic as well in terms of the goals. And this leads to a different kind of a characteristic. In this characteristic, we mean timely in the sense that it is an appropriate question for the times, for what's going on right now. For example, there's a boom in research on fake news at this moment, because right now this is a big issue. So timeliness has a lot to do with engaging a general population interest in a particular topic. So this also means you might have a great question, but maybe it was probably more appropriate 20 years ago or something like that, right? So try to make sure that it's up to date in terms of relevance to your readers. Great research questions are also important. They're not just asking those simple questions. They're questions that when answered have the potential of changing or improving something. So if we were to have an answer to this particular question, it could really change a whole lot. So big questions, important questions, you know, how and to what extent could a training course mitigate the innate bias somebody has against different races or against genders or against people of different ages? Can you be trained to reduce an innate bias? Well, that's a huge and important question. It does have a broader impact beyond even just your particular action research that you might be doing in your classroom. So do try to get your head into this idea of the important questions, not just the immediate questions, but maybe the important things as well. Another guide is to think of great research questions are meaningful, whether or not the answer is yes or no. And that's really a hard thing for a lot of researchers to get their head around. When you answer a research question, you're not out to prove anything. Research, good educational research answers the question, independent of what you find. And that's got to be important in and of itself, right? So you're not out to prove a point. That is definitely not research that just shows you're that you're biased for finding a certain answer. So that's not a good thing, right? So you need to pose questions, great questions that independent of their answer, even if we don't find what we were expecting, it's an important answer. Say if we ask the question, would girls performance in science classes improve if they were only paired with girls or if they were paired with boys? Does it make a difference? And you have a hypothesis in your head, you're thinking, Oh, yeah, absolutely. Girls work with girls are going to get better grades. Guess what? It's not true. But it's an important answer to find out that it's not true, isn't it? Right? So it doesn't matter how you answered the question, the implications of what you found go beyond just the yes or no answer. Another very, very important element of a great research question is that it does not reinvent the wheel. The idea of a great research question is that it's based on the work of others. Isaac Newton once said, If I've seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulder of giants. What does that mean? It means that to advance our own thinking, we really have to scaffold our own learning based on what is already known. That's what happens in the literature view, right? We know what already has been said so that we can now see something different. We can now go beyond that we're actually building off of what other people have researched before us in order to do something even greater. Also very important within research and with academia is that your questions have to be formulated in such a way and describe the methodology has to be so clear that they can be replicated. That means somebody else can follow those same instructions and they will likely come up with pretty much the same results of what you found. So the idea is that your question is formulated so precise and the methodology that follows is so loyal to that question that your work can indeed be replicated. And this is in fact the downfall of a ton of amazing findings. For example, the Mohs Artifact, it could not be replicated and that is basically the downfall of a finding is if it can't be replicated then it's totally discredited. So be very careful with that one. And this means to a certain extent and not always but to a great extent that the great research questions are generalizable to other settings. So that means if I ask it in one setting for example in one country if I ask the same thing in another country I'm going to find pretty much the same thing. So if I were to ask something like you know how and to what extent does bilingualism improve executive functions what I find in my setting should then be applicable in other settings which then makes the findings even more important beyond just what you find in your classroom it's something that we can share and say is applicable in other classrooms as well. This also means that research questions are very much based on a kind of a logical rationale where you're looking at strands of evidence from the past from other literature from other theories from multiple ways of viewing your topic. And once all brought together that actually produces something very different a unique strand of rope. So taking into account that what we know from other theories may then be woven into something that points to a new direction for future research. Another kind of metaphorical understanding of this would be to think of a quilt. You have all these individual patches that once brought together may point to a whole new type or direction or design for research in the future. Great research questions are also very cyclical in nature. The answer to a great research question will naturally lead to new questions. So what you're hoping is that whatever it is that you're able to answer will then naturally spin off into a whole series of new questions. And this is what you do in your conclusions and discussion is to point out well now that I know this and now that I know the answer to this question what does this now lead to? Where does this now point to? Great research questions also normally directly or indirectly relate to some real world problem. And this is absolutely clear within classroom context because if we're looking at learning needs or learning challenges within a classroom those are definitely real world problems. Related to this very first point of precision is this point that great research questions clearly state the variables or constructs to be examined. So within the research question itself it might be you know how and to what extent does the amount of time given to answer a research question improve the quality of the answer in teachers at the primary school level or something like that right? So the what is being able to answer questions the who is are the teachers here at the primary school level what we're really examining or these variables here is how much does the amount of time that people have to answer questions influence their ability to have a deeper response. So we lay out within the single question the multiple variables that will be measured. We also know the great research questions are valid and verifiable such that whatever you conclude on the basis of your findings is correct and can be verified by others. Like did you actually interpret the data correctly? Sometimes this has to do with verifying or validating the ways that you went about analyzing the data that you gathered. Finally one of the things that's most interesting and drives a whole lot of research but doesn't get a lot of airtime is understanding that the researcher somebody who's excited about what they do and what they're interested in and invested in this process will actually go through the process more successfully faster more efficiently than somebody who is dragged into a topic which means it's really key that we begin with that first question about what do you want to know and if you begin from your own personal interest it will drive the process naturally and will be able to maintain that high level of energy motivation time devoted to tasks when we're invested in the answer. So all of these different characteristics of great research questions exist here this could be a kind of a self-assessment a rubric when you come up with your research questions you know ask yourself is this really precise is this a timely question is it really realistic is it a replicable is it verifiable ask yourself some of these questions before you begin and if that reflection you know in turn generates complications let's talk about that in class. So I'm pretty sure you guys have a clear idea of the types of questions or problems that have sparked interest in you personally and it's something you'd like to research but just some of the topics that I've heard recently that might be on your mind as well you know understanding reading processes or motivation or how writing occurs or math occurs in the brain or social emotional skills or problems with attention or the generally higher level of increased anxiety among students or why girls don't go into science fields for example or misunderstandings of Hawaiian culture or time management on the part of teachers and on students or bullying that might occur or even cyberbullying or other questions about technology use in the classroom or understanding how nutrition or sleep or exercise for example influences learning potentials or the role of parental involvement or how bilingualism might change the brain for the better there are these topics and thousands more most of them born of your own interaction with students in your own classrooms but like you just sort of land on a specific topic some area that it has that is of particular personal importance to you something that's occurring within your school or your class that you would like to do the research on and once you've thought of this topic you might consider doing a mind map and laying out you know putting the topic in the center and then thinking of all the other things that sort of work around this which is really narrow in so once you have that topic and once you have asked yourself you know what do I want to know about that topic I need you to reformulate that into a research question and we would like to motivate you to use this format where possible how and to what extent does something influence change improve modify decrease enhance any verb you like there why another variable so how does one thing influence another thing that is an elegant research question when you can isolate variables and only have one thing and its impact on another huge how and to what extent does an extra hour of sleep in the morning decrease absenteeism or improve test scores or whatever it may be just choose one thing to one thing and the reason we ask you to do this is when you have a question that says how you're basically asking for a descriptive a qualitative measure this is why you do qualitative research and when you ask a question that says to what extent so that's a quantifiable methodology approach right so if you ask a research question that has both how and to what extent you have both a quantitative and qualitative approach to your question some questions you might want to attack are just one or another just quantitative or just qualitative but for the time being try to formulate it in this way so that we can number one isolate variables and number two not close us off to being a quantitative or a qualitative study that's what we want you to do so in summary the main steps to come in with a great research question number one number one is just figure out think about all those problems that you might face in your own classroom or within your own school what are the problems that occur then identify the main topic that that is related to and once you have that topic then I want you to ask yourself well what is it you really want to know about bullying or motivation or about stem research or math in the brain or parental involvement what is it you want to know it's a harder question than it sounds all right so what do you want to know and after you've done that then try to formulate that new research question how and to what extent does something influence something or something change something else if you can do that then you've got a great research question so try all those steps on your own and when we come together I'd love to pull apart exactly any kind of roadblocks to getting this process going and to share maybe some of those great research questions you're developing right now thanks