 The way that this kind of looks in the early stages of this is that you will have analyzed an assignment, you got curious about a topic, maybe you asked a question about that topic and did a test run to kind of figure it out whether or not the language and the terms you're using are working and if it didn't work then you kind of go through that process again and if not then you went ahead and you refined your question and then that inquiry question that you ended up with had a few characteristics hopefully and if it doesn't then that's something where it can just be a work in progress there's no need to have a perfect inquiry question really you keep working on it up until the point where you have that thesis statement for your paper when you have your final drafts but a strong inquiry question to kind of move you through that research and writing process that we're engaged in right now it's going to have a few things including it's going to be a multi-dimensional complex so a really easy way to measure that is could you answer your question with a yes or no answer and if so then that means it is probably not multi-dimensional and complex enough so you're gonna want to have a couple different elements you're taking a look at at the same time when you do that it helps make it narrow and focus as well typically that's what's going to happen sometimes it can become a little bit too narrow and focused but generally speaking most folks need to actually narrow their topics a little bit more a good way to think about this question that you can ask yourself to see if you're narrow enough and focus is to ask yourself could you write an entire book in response to the question that you're gonna be researching or could you engage in a lifetime of research in relation to it now if the answer to those are yes then you might want to ask yourself if there's some ways that you could narrow it a little bit more sometimes you're gonna still write on some broader topics and you definitely want to check in with what the assignment is asking of you but having that narrow focus is actually gonna be more helpful because the one of the main things that it does is it helps you have that specific language which is one of the other characteristics of a strong inquiry question is going to have some language where you are going to be able to put that into some of the academic research databases and be able to find some sources that come back in relation to that so it's going to be much narrow in terms of where you want to go so let's take a look at an example of how this might work so if I had an inquiry question that could still be refined I might have a question where it said what are some of the impacts of refineries on birds at Cherry Point so if you don't know Cherry Point as a refinery that's here in Wacom County and by the Billingham campus and I need to kind of get this a little bit more refined because if I asked myself could I do a lifetime of research on this you know the answer is possibly yes I mean probably fairly easily take a while I mean there's lots of different kinds of birds and it turns out there's even more than one Cherry Point as well so I might need to get a lot more focused on that so to develop a refined inquiry question I can start to ask myself about which concepts in my question could be more specific there is more than one Cherry Point as a simple who will search tells me and there are lots of birds that could be researched which birds are we talking about all birds specific birds I might ask myself what I mean by impacts what are the impacts from a refinery I might research I might also ask myself why my question matters why am I looking into this question other than because I have an assignment to complete you might not have an answer to this or other questions at this point and that is okay however if you have an idea of what you might want to make or research you should consider adding that to your inquiry question it doesn't mean that the research will end up backing up the point that you're trying to research at this point so you should be willing to change it but it does help you give a direction for your research wherever specifics can be added that will help when I start looking for sources that speak to this topic so with the revised inquiry question I have refined it to ask in what ways does the BP refinery at Cherry Point in Walkham County impact great blue heron feeding and nesting habitat in the last ten years and what can be done to mitigate the negative impacts so now I have a specific species of birds specific geographic location a specific type of habitat a time range I'm looking at and I'm asking what can be done about the negative impacts these specific variables or dimensions of the question are going to help me keep focused on my research and writing in my paper and that will be and it will help make it substantial enough chances are once I get into the research I will need to change this question further but at least now I can start moving into asking some questions about my inquiry question which will help me locate sources that will effectively speak to my inquiry question in addition in addition to starting to build out the sections of my paper take a look at some of the things that we've just talked about now take a moment to take a look at your inquiry question and kind of think about how you might make it nowhere more focused or more multi-dimensional if you're feeling stuck on this then this is a great time to go ahead and chat with one of our staff you can chat with us online they'd be happy to think about some of the different variables that you might look at in making your inquiry question a little bit more focused and a little bit more researchable