Page 1 of 4 (061623) RESEARCH PAPER: IDEA DEVELOPMENT ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS OV

Page 1 of 4 (061623)
RESEARCH PAPER: IDEA DEVELOPMENT ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
OVERVIEW
This assignment is designed to help you develop your skills in designing a research project that
answers three important questions in any research design. These questions are the WHAT,
WHY, and HOW questions. These questions coincide with various components in the
dissertation formula. Review the outline chart to visualize these connections.
These questions can be conceptualized as follows:
WHAT
This is the “what do I want to know” question. You begin with a broad topic or some
phenomenon or question about which you are curious. This question is often initially broad,
though it can be a bit more specific depending on the origin of the question. This question then
leads to the development of a well formatted research question from which the hypotheses and
variables to be used throughout the proposal and research project are derived. An important thing
to note in this is that a research project does not seek to demonstrate something, bring awareness
to something, or enact something. You must start with the perspective that there is something
you want to investigate (not prove).
WHY
The “why” can also be called the “so what” question. That is, you may have a great idea
of something you want to research that would be interesting to know. But if we already know the
answer to it, we fail the so what question. We need to ask, “How does this add to the body of
knowledge, and how might it be used?” Your research must fill a gap in the current knowledge.
Otherwise, there is no need to research it further. Therefore an important part of the
development of your initial idea is that you review the literature available on your topic to see
what we already know about your topic and question. This funnels to “what we want to know
next.”
HOW
A third important question is “How do I answer the ‘What do I want to know’ question?”
This question is answered when you design your methodology, but should have some initial
thoughts and direction from the beginning of the project development. For example, if you know
you do not have access to a population you want to study, then there will be no way to study that
phenomenon with that population. You may have to consider a different population that can be
generalized, or you may need to revise your project a bit. You must also have at least an initial
idea that the thing you are measuring can in fact be measured. At this stage, you should be
thinking about how you might operationalize your variables. That helps you to know that what
you are measuring is something that actually can be measured, and get you started about how
you might measure those. However, you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself by designing
the “How” before you have a clear “What” to include your research question(s), hypothesis(es),
and clearly identified variables. As you design your methodology, and in some ways after you
collect your data, an additional question must be answered which is, “Does this actually measure
what I say it measures?” This question has to do with validity and reliability among other
PSYC 815
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factors. You will not determine the answer to this latter question at this point, but you do want to
have it in mind as you progress through your project.
Liberty Dissertation Outline – Chapter One Process
Introduction WHAT
(A description of the topic to introduce the study)
Background WHAT/WHY
(A thorough review of the research on your topic and biblical foundation.)