Writing research questions is not a technical task. If you have a well-defined problem statement, you can surely make a research question within a fraction of time. Moreover, the identification of potential variables involved in a study can further simplify the research question creation process for you. However, if you want to write good questions, you must spend quality time in order to refine research questions. For refining the research question, you must use a number of methods as they anchor your whole research. This article will be a complete writing guide for nursing and health care students who are new in the research field and want to effectively cater for all research question creation related problems by describing some top methods:
Importance Of Research Questions Creation:
Research question creation is important to take a head start. It helps researchers to collect all relevant information related to the problem statement and suggests ways to start writing. The research questions are vital to research as they allow focusing on the specific issue or problem under study. They help in making a research project manageable by breaking it into different tasks. They define the topic of interest and approaches suitable to investigate it. These present clear research goals, so the researcher can strive towards them. They are effective enough to suggest you the right path to stay on track. All in all, research question creation is a process of systematically organising a research project.
Importance Of Research Question Creation In Nursing And Healthcare Practices:
From a clinical point of view, research questions are important to close the gaps between knowledge and practice. They help in resolving the discrepancy between current practices in healthcare services and how they are expected to be. The purpose of research question creation in the medical and healthcare services is to make a query about the issue or problem that needs to be analysed, examined and challenged in order to yield new but useful information. These are important to organise the literature review of a study. Therefore, hiring a PhD dissertation writing service becomes important for them.
In nursing and healthcare, the research question creation can be done by using several methods and frameworks such as:
PICO:
PICO stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcomes. This is usually used in qualitative research that aims to compare two or more treatments and interventions. Here, population means patients or people receiving the treatment. Intervention refers to any pharmacological or non-pharmacological treatments. The comparison indicates a control scenario between different treatments. Lastly, outcomes refer to results that the researcher expects to obtain.
PEO:
PEO stands for Population/Patient/Problem, Exposure and Outcomes. This method of refining these questions helps in qualitative research. This method takes into account an additional factor, ‘exposure’, meaning the incidence of a particular disease.
PICO and PEO are the most popular models or frameworks that help nursing and healthcare researchers to formulate good research questions and refine the existing ones. There are many other methods as well, such as:
SPIDER:
SPIDER is a mixed research method. It stands for Sample, Phenomenon, Design, Evaluation, and Research.
SPICE:
SPICE is the contraction of Setting, Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Evaluation.
FINER:
It is another method for research question creation that comprises five elements: Feasibility, Interesting, Novel, Ethical, and Relevant.
How Do These Methods And Frameworks Help Students In Research Question Creations?
Research question creation by using this method or framework is relatively an easy process. For making such questions, all you need to do is to select the most appropriate framework that can best explain your research goals. Once you select the right framework, the next step is to make a table and search for data relevant to each factor of the framework in your own research context. For example, if you select the PICO framework for your qualitative nursing or healthcare research, then you should search about your expected population, intervention, comparison, and outcome to make outstanding research questions.
It helps you in making research questions such as ‘Does diet in comparison with exercise reduces the incidence of cardiovascular diseases among obese people?’ In this research question, obese people refer to the population, intervention refers to moderate exercise, a comparison is made by taking into account two methods, diet and exercise, and reduction in cardiovascular disease is an expected outcome. In the same context, you can use other methods as well for research question creation.
Three Important Phases Of Research Questions:
According to Hanson (an expert clinical researcher), research question creation is important as it aids in defining and identifying parameters necessary to structure research. Such questions invite an array of research methodologies that are really important in solving a scientific query. Thus, the research question creation process can be divided into three phases:
- Formulating and defining the research questions
- Refining the research questions
- Extracting specific aims from research questions
These are three phases of research question creation. You can also follow three steps to make good research questions. First, ask interesting questions relevant to the nature of your study. Second, select the best question for your research that can help you get closer to your research goals. Third, convert the these to make a testable hypothesis. Furthermore, you can also use the following detailed steps for writing good research questions:
- Choose an interesting topic for research
- Conduct preliminary research on the topic of interest and other relevant topics
- Know your audience
- Ask questions regarding your research ambiguities
- Evaluate your questions
- Make a last effort to improve questions
Final Thoughts:
All in all, research question creation is essential for academic writing as well as for a research task. Regardless of your discipline, research questions help structure and plan research for all. It aims to hint at best possible method that can solve a scientific query. Generally, you can follow many steps to form good research questions; starting from selecting a topic of interest, passing by identifying multiple variables and ending by making them clear and focused. The nursing and healthcare students can use PICO, PEO, SPIDER, SPICE, and FINER for research question creation.
