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Write research questions

Purpose

Research questions drive the strategy of any research project. They narrow the client's motivating challenge/fuzzy situation into 5-8 questions that are:

  • clear: providing enough specifics that one’s audience can easily understand its purpose without needing additional explanation.
  • focused: narrow enough that it can be answered thoroughly in the space the writing task allows.
  • concise: expressed in the fewest possible words.
  • complex: not answerable with a simple “yes” or “no,” but rather requires synthesis and analysis of ideas and sources 
  • arguable: its potential answers are open to debate rather than accepted facts

Responsible Party

Ops Project Lead

Interdependencies

  • An Alignment Meeting was conducted, and the data was transcribed.
  • The project has been sold, and
  • Any changes to the organization that happened between alignment and sale have been communicated to the Ops Team.
  • The research questions are reviewed with the client in early logistics planning meetings.
Directions
  1. Open and review the project's Scoping Document.
  2. Create a new Mural using the Research Questions template.
  3. Copy all Questions + Curiosities from the Scoping Document  + paste them into Mural.
    • You may need to paste the questions into a document first in order to paste them as individual sticky notes.
    • Copy over the headers from the document and keep the question notes grouped
Example

  1. Sort the questions into areas that represent Phases (if applicable) or In Scope and Out of Scope based on the Scoping Document.
Example

  1. Conduct sense-making/affinity grouping for the in-scope questions.

Example

  1. Diverge + converge on questions to address the themes you identified. Use the Research Warehouse as a reference.

Example

  1. Copy all of the original questions and show how they connect to the research questions you wrote.
    • This can be done in Mural or a Google Sheet 
    • Consider
      • Are all the leader questions addressed?
      • Are any of the research questions only addressing one or two leadership questions?
      • Are any of the research questions redundant?
  2. Conduct one more round of convergence, combining/deleting questions until you have 7-10 total research questions
  3. Paste the research questions into the Project Charter
  4. Schedule a Gate Check with another member of the Ops Team

Gate: Review your research questions with another member of the Ops Team. 

Gate Questions
  • Do the research questions address all of the leadership concerns?
  • Are the questions easy to interpret?
  • Are they scoped appropriately? (I.e., can data collection methods be developed based on them? Are they too specific or too abstract?)
  1. Revise questions in the Project Charter as needed.
  2. Add the research questions to the Research Scope and Delimitation content.
Resources

Mural: Research Questions Template

Google Sheet: Research Questions

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