Adapted from Lourdes Fernandez, Reflection: the research question

According to Comer, effective research questions:

• Originate from a disciplinary context (take into account prior disciplinary knowledge)
• Maintain significance (to a subset of people)
• Keep a pointed scope (they are manageable and part of a larger question)
• Spur further research (they have multiple branches of inquiry leading to and from them)

Describe how your most current research question fulfills each of the characteristics described above.

• How does your research question fit within a specific discourse community?
• How is it significant for a specific audience? How might your question spur additional questions for a specific audience?
• What other avenues of research are currently unexplored but might be viable research questions for your area of inquiry?
• How might different key terms, a different focus (on a specific demographic, on a subset of the problem, on a different audience) might shift the current research question?
• Provide specific examples of how your research question meets/does not meet the characteristics above.

Respond to one other student.