Questions must be narrowed down from our initial interests in research. When we start thinking about a study, it is common to come up with either too many questions or else no questions at all. This part of the lesson will demonstrate how one idea can lead to multiple research possibilities, from which we then must choose based on practicalities and personal needs.
If you haven’t completed it yet, start to fill out the 2.4.2: MethodologyMethodologyThe theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data. Exploration worksheet in your LPOL Workbook from Course 2 Lesson 4: Exploring Methodologies That Suit Your Project. If you are having trouble with any of the sections, that is normal. Methodologies and data are complicated issues, and researchers are constantly adjusting their research plan during the early and even middle stages of research design. Fill out what you can and revisit when you need to.
If you have multiple ideas, start a new Methodology Exploration Worksheet for each alternative. Writing those alternative ideas down will help with the reflexive process. If worksheets aren’t conducive to the way you plan, consider drawing doodles or diagrams inspired by the rows in the Methodology worksheet, dictating your ideas to your phone, or asking a notetaking friend to jot down your ideas as you actively brainstorm.
You may be wondering, why go through the extra work of considering alternative methodological solutions to your question? Narrowing down from topic to final question is not a one-and-done process. Small differences in the question can make a big difference in how it meets our interests and priorities. Even when you think you’ve solidified your research question, it’s helpful to look over other possibilities to make sure your question is the right one to help you reach your research objective. Consider the differences between these similar research questions on accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility ensures that all people—regardless of ability—can interact with the information or services provided. As a researcher thinks about the impact of their research, accessibility in this sense refers to the ways in which others can find, review, and understand a researcher’s research. This could mean how the information is available (paywall vs. non-paywall), language used, and how the project is presented (traditional manuscript vs. digitally-born interactive project). policies in libraries:
What are the most common ways that library policies incorporate accessibility in services?
Figure 2, created by Nina Exner for LibParlor Online Learning, 2023.
What recommended accessibility strategies are most commonly missing from library service policies?
Figure 3, created by Nina Exner for LibParlor Online Learning, 2023.
While both questions could be further narrowed, we can see that both address policies and accessibility. They are very similar and would both yield insights on areas of success and need for library accessibility.
Using Personal & Professional Priorities to Choose Your Research Question
Many factors can go into narrowing down the “best” question to ask in the topic area. Researcher-librarians have many responsibilities to balance, and it is important to be realistic about our needs and priorities as we focus our topic toward a question. For example, a librarian with tenure requirements or a continuing contract review deadline requiring research productivity may need to prioritize speed and matching methodologies that are acceptable to their tenure or review guidelines over other priorities at this stage of their career. It is essential to meet one’s immediate job duties before considering more complex and long-term needs from a research career. On the other hand, a librarian without tenure deadline pressures but with an intense desire to advocate for a certain topic may prefer to choose a more time-consuming question, if they find one that resonates. Previous lessons in the curriculum explore types of research outcomes and how they may methodologically lean toward different types of data and align with different views a researcher has about the relationship of research and the world.
There are infinite possible priorities to consider, and you may have already reflected on many of them in earlier lessons. Some priorities relate to methods outcomes, while others encourage or constrain a certain approach because of speed (such as a tenure clock) or resource availability. Not every research project will meet all our needs at once, but it is important to recognize those needs and priorities. A few relatively common priorities include:
Identifying or bringing awareness to work-task or process challenges without existing solutions
Producing evidence to understand or demonstrate the impact of our library and/or work
Comparing benchmark evidence about our library
Meeting tenure deadlines
Advocating for the needs of specific user groups and/or colleague groups
Achieving evaluation requirements for annual or promotion reviews
Understanding researcher colleagues through personal experience with research
Overcoming the fear of data and/or statistics
Desiring to gain experience in working with scholarly methodologies and handling different kinds of data
Exploring the experiences of librarians, comparing and contrasting them with our own experiences systematically
Building the evidence available for libraries and library workers to benchmark or advocate
Explaining libraries to stakeholders outside the library community
Fulfilling a personal desire to explore a particular topic
Considering the availability or unavailability of tools for a certain analysis
Addressing access or lack of access to relevant data or to the communities that can provide appropriate data and knowledge
What are your priorities and how do they relate to how you want to conduct your research? Think about this and write it down.
Next, review your Methodology worksheet(s) and your priorities together to rank your ideas for questions and methodologies. After you’ve brainstormed a topic or topics and their potential methods, it’s best to let them sit with you a day or more. Use that time to think about priorities related to your research.
Remember that this research question is not your whole research agendaResearch agendaAn iterative document or statement that provides a roadmap to your short and long term topics and ideas you’d like to research.. “Accessibility in libraries” is a research agenda, not a research question. Often, new researchers create a question that is too broad and not appropriate for a single research study. Therefore, when questions don’t seem to fit all your priorities, remember to consider whether they represent one aspect of a priority! When considering wide priorities, such as advocacy and change, you must ensure a balance between study feasibility and advocacy impact.
Is one project idea meeting the most priorities and/or the highest priorities for you right now? Or are there still too many potential ideas or only vague ones you can’t narrow? Those are common challenges as we wrestle with creating a narrowed research plan. If your topic still needs more work, consider two approaches:
Problem statement free-writing: If your strengths are in creative free-flowing expression, write an unstructured statement on the problem you want to solve and what you wish you and your colleagues knew about the problem in order to improve it. Format your ideas however they flow best, such as typing without concern about grammar, handwriting notes and doodles, or dictating to your phone’s talk-to-text function.
AbstractAbstractThe concise summary of a research article that provides a broad overview of the research being presented. first: If you prefer more organized ideas, try composing a narrowing abstract. Allison Hosier’s (2019) post and related worksheet can help with this process. Writing an abstract that provides a vision for the final study is a great way to organize and express aspects of an idea that need to be expounded upon.
Iterating your ideas and aligning them with your current and future priorities will hopefully help you narrow down to one leading concept for your research trajectory. Your leading concept should include a research question and a preliminary vision of what the response(s) could look like, with some potential analytical methods and data types. Next, we can consider how to refine the fit and feasibility of the data and methods. Reflection and adjustment usually continue throughout the design process.
Now, let’s see how your final research question is shaping up. Feel free to write down or record your reflections in a journal or notebook, because we often need to reflect in our original intentions later in the research process! Include your overall goal, your objectives, your priorities, and finally: your research question.
Activity
Complete the following activity in your LPOL Workbook. This activity will help you work toward a final curriculum deliverable, and it will help you develop your overall research plan.
Keeping the reflection and work you’ve done thus far, complete the 3.2.4: Reflecting On Your Research Question worksheet in your LPOL Workbook.
Narrowing Down Your Research Question
Questions must be narrowed down from our initial interests in research. When we start thinking about a study, it is common to come up with either too many questions or else no questions at all. This part of the lesson will demonstrate how one idea can lead to multiple research possibilities, from which we then must choose based on practicalities and personal needs.
If you haven’t completed it yet, start to fill out the 2.4.2: MethodologyMethodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data. Exploration worksheet in your LPOL Workbook from Course 2 Lesson 4: Exploring Methodologies That Suit Your Project. If you are having trouble with any of the sections, that is normal. Methodologies and data are complicated issues, and researchers are constantly adjusting their research plan during the early and even middle stages of research design. Fill out what you can and revisit when you need to.
If you have multiple ideas, start a new Methodology Exploration Worksheet for each alternative. Writing those alternative ideas down will help with the reflexive process. If worksheets aren’t conducive to the way you plan, consider drawing doodles or diagrams inspired by the rows in the Methodology worksheet, dictating your ideas to your phone, or asking a notetaking friend to jot down your ideas as you actively brainstorm.
You may be wondering, why go through the extra work of considering alternative methodological solutions to your question? Narrowing down from topic to final question is not a one-and-done process. Small differences in the question can make a big difference in how it meets our interests and priorities. Even when you think you’ve solidified your research question, it’s helpful to look over other possibilities to make sure your question is the right one to help you reach your research objective. Consider the differences between these similar research questions on accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility ensures that all people—regardless of ability—can interact with the information or services provided. As a researcher thinks about the impact of their research, accessibility in this sense refers to the ways in which others can find, review, and understand a researcher’s research. This could mean how the information is available (paywall vs. non-paywall), language used, and how the project is presented (traditional manuscript vs. digitally-born interactive project). policies in libraries:
What are the most common ways that library policies incorporate accessibility in services?
What recommended accessibility strategies are most commonly missing from library service policies?
While both questions could be further narrowed, we can see that both address policies and accessibility. They are very similar and would both yield insights on areas of success and need for library accessibility.
Using Personal & Professional Priorities to Choose Your Research Question
Many factors can go into narrowing down the “best” question to ask in the topic area. Researcher-librarians have many responsibilities to balance, and it is important to be realistic about our needs and priorities as we focus our topic toward a question. For example, a librarian with tenure requirements or a continuing contract review deadline requiring research productivity may need to prioritize speed and matching methodologies that are acceptable to their tenure or review guidelines over other priorities at this stage of their career. It is essential to meet one’s immediate job duties before considering more complex and long-term needs from a research career. On the other hand, a librarian without tenure deadline pressures but with an intense desire to advocate for a certain topic may prefer to choose a more time-consuming question, if they find one that resonates. Previous lessons in the curriculum explore types of research outcomes and how they may methodologically lean toward different types of data and align with different views a researcher has about the relationship of research and the world.
There are infinite possible priorities to consider, and you may have already reflected on many of them in earlier lessons. Some priorities relate to methods outcomes, while others encourage or constrain a certain approach because of speed (such as a tenure clock) or resource availability. Not every research project will meet all our needs at once, but it is important to recognize those needs and priorities. A few relatively common priorities include:
What are your priorities and how do they relate to how you want to conduct your research? Think about this and write it down.
Next, review your Methodology worksheet(s) and your priorities together to rank your ideas for questions and methodologies. After you’ve brainstormed a topic or topics and their potential methods, it’s best to let them sit with you a day or more. Use that time to think about priorities related to your research.
Remember that this research question is not your whole research agendaResearch agenda An iterative document or statement that provides a roadmap to your short and long term topics and ideas you’d like to research.. “Accessibility in libraries” is a research agenda, not a research question. Often, new researchers create a question that is too broad and not appropriate for a single research study. Therefore, when questions don’t seem to fit all your priorities, remember to consider whether they represent one aspect of a priority! When considering wide priorities, such as advocacy and change, you must ensure a balance between study feasibility and advocacy impact.
Is one project idea meeting the most priorities and/or the highest priorities for you right now? Or are there still too many potential ideas or only vague ones you can’t narrow? Those are common challenges as we wrestle with creating a narrowed research plan. If your topic still needs more work, consider two approaches:
Iterating your ideas and aligning them with your current and future priorities will hopefully help you narrow down to one leading concept for your research trajectory. Your leading concept should include a research question and a preliminary vision of what the response(s) could look like, with some potential analytical methods and data types. Next, we can consider how to refine the fit and feasibility of the data and methods. Reflection and adjustment usually continue throughout the design process.
Now, let’s see how your final research question is shaping up. Feel free to write down or record your reflections in a journal or notebook, because we often need to reflect in our original intentions later in the research process! Include your overall goal, your objectives, your priorities, and finally: your research question.
Activity
Complete the following activity in your LPOL Workbook. This activity will help you work toward a final curriculum deliverable, and it will help you develop your overall research plan.
Keeping the reflection and work you’ve done thus far, complete the 3.2.4: Reflecting On Your Research Question worksheet in your LPOL Workbook.
Topic 4 References
Bastone, Zoe. “I Can Do This! Doing Research as a Non-Tenure-Track Librarian. A Librarian Parlor Series, Part II.” The Librarian Parlor. September 10, 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/09/10/i-can-do-this-doing-research-as-a-non-tenure-track-librarian-a-librarian-parlor-series-part-ii/.
Betz, Gail. 2019. “Merging Theoretical Research with Practice-Based Research.” The Librarian Parlor. November 20, 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/11/20/merging-theoretical-research-with-practice-based-research/.
Fiedler, Brittany, and Chelsea Heinbach. 2018. “How Do You Even Start? A Librarian Parlor Series, Part I.” The Librarian Parlor. February 21, 2018. https://libparlor.com/2018/02/21/how-do-you-even-start-a-librarian-parlor-series-part-i/.
Halpern, Rebecca. 2018. “Research Agendas: You Can Go Your Own Way.” The Librarian Parlor. October 24, 2018. https://libparlor.com/2018/10/24/research-agendas-you-can-go-your-own-way/.
Hosier, Allison. “Focusing Your Research By Writing the Abstract First.” The Librarian Parlor. January 16, 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/01/16/focusing-your-research-by-writing-the-abstract-first/ .
Kloda, Lorie. “Asking the Right Question.” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 11, no. 1(S) (2016): 7–9.doi.org/10.18438/B8XG9C.
Manwiller, Katie. 2020. “When Research Gets Personal.” The Librarian Parlor. February 11, 2020. https://libparlor.com/2020/02/11/when-research-gets-personal/.
Stuit, Martha, and Joanna Thielen. “Getting Started, Part II: How to Start Research and Writing Projects.” The Librarian Parlor, April 2, 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/04/02/getting-started-how-to-start-research-and-writing-projects/.