Master ISS literature search: Phrasing the question

On this page:

Formulating a research question

Formulating a research question for qualitative research

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Developing your research question

Other pages:

Introduction

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Search engines

Search strategy and search techniques

Getting hold of the full text

Selecting and evaluating sources

Referring in APA style

Thesis

Summary and feedback

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Read the pages from top to bottom.

You can navigate to specific topics or pages by clicking the links in the Index.

Make sure your research question is clear, specific or focused, and answerable.

Clear: your question provides enough information that readers can easily understand its purpose without needing additional explanation.
Focused and answerable: your question can be answered thoroughly in the space the writing task allows.

You can use the PICO model (especially suitable for clinical questions) to help you with phrasing the research question: 

• Population/Problem: What are the characteristics of the population or problem (demographics, risk factors, age group, etc)?
• Intervention: What is the intervention under consideration for this population?
• Comparison: What is the alternative to the intervention
• Outcome: What are the included outcomes (e.g. quality of life, adverse effects)?

Or use the acronym PAC: Population, Association, Construct. This tool is more suitable for other types of research design: To what extent is [construct 1] associated with [construct 2] in [types of people and setting if specified].

Or the well known Who, What, How questions. For example: How does the What affect the Who?

Qualitative research questions are typically used to discover, explain, predict, interpret, understand, explore or describe certain areas of research. These are often flexible open-ended questions in order to obtain a description rather than to relate variables or compare groups.
Tips:

• Formulate a clear and focused research question. Keep a balance between depth and breadth.
• Begin your research question with words such as ‘why', 'how’ and ‘what’.
• Avoid leading or biased questions.

Examples:

• How many times a month do male and female university students use a food delivery app?
• What educational strategies help encourage safe driving in young adults?
• What do people in Sub-Saharan rural societies see as moral or immoral?

Now you need to specify your inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteria describe specific characteristics which a study must meet to be included in your literature review.
Exclusion criteria describe anything that would make a study ineligible to be included.

Determining your inclusion/exclusion criteria will partly run parallel with creating your research question. This is because the question already partly defines which characteristics are important, and at the same time you will enable yourself to accentuate your research question by determining your inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Think about:

• Population characteristics (e.g. adolescents, immigrants)
• Problem specifics (e.g. drug use (general) vs cannabis use/XTC (more specific)
• Setting or location (e.g. school(type), rural/urban, country)
• Study design (e.g. qualitative/quantitative, cross-sectional studies)
• Reported outcome (e.g. 

And more practical: 

• Language (e.g. only English?)
• Publication year (e.g. only the last 10 years)
• Type of publication (e.g. only academic, peer-reviewed articles)

This section of the LibGuide originates from the master Youth Studies (-2023), it may not represent the current curriculum of your master.

For your systematic literature review you will need, besides a clear main question (in which you research the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable), also subquestions (think of a mediation or moderation effect).

Mediation

A research question in which mediation is researched could be:

• Is the relation between impopularity and symptoms of depression in adolescents mediated by the use of social network sites?

You research the direct relation between impopularity (independent variable) and symptoms of depression (dependent variable) and the indirect relation between these two variables via social network sites (mediator).
A visual representation of mediation could look like the image blow (in which 1 is the original relation and 4 the relation checked before the mediator):

Moderation (interaction effect)

A research question in which moderation (interaction effect) is researched could be:

• To what extent is socio-economic status related to cannabis use in adolescents and is this relation moderated by their parents style of upbringing?

You research the relation between socio-economic status (independent variable) and cannabis use (dependent variable) and check if this relation is influenced by education/upbringing (moderator).

A visual representation of moderation could look like the image below:

Translation:

onafhankelijke variabele = independent variable
afhankelijke variabele = dependent variable