Forming Research Questions

Star Wars And Research Questions

Have you ever watched Star Wars IV? ❗Spoiler Alert❗At the end of the movie, a fleet of Rebel starfighters are attempting to destroy the Empire’s Death Star. Luke Skywalker ultimately annihilates the Death Star by firing two proton torpedos into a narrow shaft that leads to the Death Star’s reactor core. Luke and the rebel forces did not destroy the Death Star by focusing on attacking the entire moon-sized space station, but by focusing on the small exhaust port shaft. When creating research questions, you should follow a similar tactic as the rebels and focus on narrowing your research questions.

A research question is a sentence that explains what you will be learning, researching, and writing about. Your research question often reflects your information need and drives your search for sources.

It is often our natural tendency to create too broad of research questions, but picking your topic and narrowing down your question is part of the research process!

The process of narrowing your research question can take some practice. Watch the following video to learn from a past WRTG150 student who successfully selected and narrowed down his research topic.

Download a transcript of the video here.

As you take the time to complete this homework, you will learn how to create narrower and higher-quality research questions.

Why Should I Create a Narrow Research Question?

Download a transcript version of the interactive infographic here.

As you can see, there are many reasons you will want to narrow your research question. Narrowing your research question makes it easier and quicker to find relevant, high-quality sources, so taking time to narrow your research question at the beginning of the writing process will save you in the long run. Take some time to look at the following example.

As you saw in the above example, as you narrow your research question, it is easier to find high-quality sources that relate to your specific research question.

Think of it this way; if you Google a broad subject like “mental health”, you would get sources about hundreds of thousands of different subtopics, or more specific topics, related to mental health. It would be hard to know what specific subtopic to write about and which sources to use.

On the other hand, you could ask a specific question such as, “How does Instagram affect teenage girls’ eating habits?” You could then use phrases such as “mental health” & “Instagram” & “eating habits” in your Google search. This search would then provide you with sources specific to your narrow research question.