This Week: Focus on Writing Research Questions and Hypotheses
To prepare for this Application:
- Review Chapter 7 from the course text, Research Design.
- Begin writing a research question or questions and hypothesis or hypotheses. If your proposed study is qualitative, focus on research questions; there will be no hypothesis.
- Use the Research Questions and Hypotheses Checklist handout to guide the refinement of your work on these components.
- Continue to refine your choices for articles in your annotated bibliography as needed—you will need total of eight articles for the final assignment. Review the Article Critique Checklist handout and use it as a tool to assess the articles you have chosen.
The assignment:
- Prepare the following for this part of the assignment and add it to the assignment from last week (you are building a single document to be submitted this week):
- A research question (or questions) and a justification of its viability
- A hypothesis (or hypotheses) and a justification of its viability (If your proposed study is qualitative, there will be no hypothesis.)
This week in the optional Workshop Discussion, consider posting the following information for feedback from your colleagues:
- Provide your purpose statement from Week 6.
- Develop your previously drafted research question (from Week 5.) Use the Research Questions and Hypotheses Checklist handout located in the Learning Resources to guide you. Now that you have learned more about research questions, you may find that your question will change considerably.
- Justify the viability of your research question.
- How does the question address a “gap” in existing knowledge in your area of study?
- To what extent does the purpose statement evoke the research question?
- In what ways could the question serve to address real-world problems and potentially lead to social change?
