Let’s dive straight in—what makes a good research question? Well, the answer is both simple and not so simple. Suppose you chose to delve into political science, which suggests you’re eyeing a future in politics, ideally backed by a degree (no specific jab intended, of course). Now, let’s discuss a challenging question in this domain: U.S.-Russia relations, which we find quite intriguing. Now that we have our topic, let’s ask a question:

“Are U.S.-Russia relations good?”

You can see that the question is somewhat limited in its answer scope, allowing for a simple “yes” or “no”. Although this is a start, it’s still not enough, especially not for writing a comprehensive and high-quality paper based merely on “yes” or “no”. So, let’s refine our research question a bit. Suppose we think the answer is “no”. Some of you might be raising your eyebrows right now, but trust us—we aren’t the first to write about poor relations between the U.S. and Russia, as the saying “every question has an answer” almost always holds true in academic research.

Now that we have an answer to our original question, we begin to construct our research proposal. We’ve crafted an initial hypothesis in the context that “U.S.-Russia relations are not good,” and now we need to support our hypothesis, meaning the work will need to examine all the factors and aspects explaining why U.S.-Russia relations aren’t good. It’s advisable to start by searching Google or, if you really like sitting there, in a library, for all the issues that came up during the history of the two countries; slowly begin collecting all the information to produce a solid answer to your question. We’ll move a bit forward in the process and say you’ve found that during Obama’s presidency, there were quite a few diplomatic conflicts and struggles, unlike during Bush’s time when U.S.-Russia relations were much better. Here’s where the magic happens—without realizing it, we’ve crafted a challenging, interesting, and high-quality research question: 

“What factors explain the deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations during Obama’s presidency compared to Bush’s?” 

Perfect, right?

From here, we’ll begin building the chapters of our work that will survey all the factors we’ve found, or those we think are good enough to answer the question. But what if our work isn’t theoretical, but an empirical one filled with numbers and variables, things we’re a bit uncomfortable with since we’ve primarily studied political science and “what does it have to do with stats?” Many professors or courses require you to submit an empirical work based on questionnaires. In this case, it’s crucial to understand the components of the research question so that the practical aspect is as precise as possible. At Virtuai LLC, we love challenges, so we’ll try to build an empirical research question for a theoretical field.

Staying with U.S.-Russia relations, let’s go back to the original research question—”What factors explain the deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations during Obama’s presidency compared to Bush’s?” We think it would be interesting to know what the public thinks about Obama’s presidency. The problem is that we can’t really generalize about the entire public if we hadn’t counted everyone. We might need to narrow down our research population a bit, maybe asking, “What do students think?” Another issue that arises is that it’s very difficult to get definitive findings. Think about it – a political science student might think one thing, while a chemistry student thinks something completely different. Therefore, we’ll try to narrow down our research population even more and ask, “What do political science students think?” Now, we have a narrowed down, quality research population that we can physically approach.

Let’s think about what we want to know—are we interested in what political science students think about the Obama administration? Perhaps more specifically—we’d like to know if political science students are satisfied with U.S.-Russia relations during the Obama administration? Many questions can be asked about such a specific topic. But before we ask the question, let’s try to understand what trends we want to examine. Suppose we want to explore whether there’s a change in opinions between first-year and third-year political science students. Perhaps this way we can deduce the impacts of political science studies on students’ political opinions. Interesting, ain’t it?

A good research question in this context would ask: “Do studies in political science influence political opinions between first-year and third-year students?”

And now we have two variables:

Dependent variable: Year in the political science program.

Independent variable: Political opinions.

Our research method in this context is questionnaires on a specific topic—general opinions on the nature of U.S.-Russia relations during the Obama administration to 20 first-year students and 20 third-year students studying at the same educational institution. To be even more precise, we’ll try to minimize the effects of indirect variables like gender, age, place of residence, etc., but that’s for the more experienced among us. Now the next question is, which study method should we choose? Qualitative research or empirical research? To find out, move on to the next chapter of our incredible guide!