Hello there. My name is Rick Wolff. I am a researcher and trainer at the RISBO, Research and Training Institute affiliated to Erasmus University, Rotterdam. I'm also one of the Research Methods and Techniques teachers in a master program on Urban Management and Development. In this final video of the week, I will share with you how to define what the research is about, namely how to formulate a research question. The research question is the main guiding principle in the rest of the research process. It is important to state a good research question because you will need it in order to write a conclusion about your research that is answering the main research question. In this video, I will discuss the main criteria for a good research question. After this video, you will be able to formulate a good research question for your own research. Like the research objectives, there are rather strict rules about formulation of a research question. The research question should address an existing empirical situation, in other words, a real-life situation that exist at this moment or that did exist in the recent past. One cannot address a future situation unless with special methods like Scenario Building and Modeling that are rooted in existing empirical data. In that case, the research objective would be to predict. The question, how will a land titling project contribute to poverty reduction in Lima, addresses a future situation. The question implies that the land titling project is not there yet. No empirical data are available on a future situation. Therefore, this research question is not researchable. Only if the land titling program is being implemented, it's consequences can be researched. Like in the question, does the land titling program contribute to entrepreneurial development? The research question should be consistent with the problem statement and the research objective. If the research objective is to explain, then the research question should also be explanatory. If the research objective is to test, then the research question should be testing. Therewith, the research question is directly linked to the state of the art knowledge on the subject and the position of the research in the empirical cycle. Exploratory and descriptive research objectives lead to questions like what happens in a certain situation and how does this exactly happen? An explanatory question asks; Why does it happen? While the testing question asks; does it always happen? It's not necessary that a research question contains the words; what, how, or why to be exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory. There are other ways in which the questions can be formulated and still be exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, or testing. An exploratory or a descriptive question will always lead to a descriptive research. They will give a detailed picture of the situation. An example of an exploratory question could be, what does it mean for poor people in Lima to live in the informal sector? Such a question is relevant if no academic knowledge exists about a meaning of living in the informal sector. A descriptive question could be; what are the processes through which poor people in Lima access financial services? This question is based on the understanding that living in the informal sector implies difficulties in accessing final services. You want to have more detailed understanding of what these difficulties are. Explanatory and testing questions are of a different nature. They do not describe a situation but a question with a relation between two or more aspects in their situation. The original research question of Julia Skinner was, "Does the land titling program in Lima have an effect on the use of credit?" Here, the relation between formal land titles and credit uses questions. These two aspects we call the variables in the research question. Explanatory and testing questions should always question a relation between two or more variables. A variable in a research question is a concept that can take different values. In other words, it should be able to vary. For example, gender is a concept that can take the value men and women. Transport can take the values public transport and private transport or motorized transport and none motorized transport. In the case of Julia's original research question, both variables could take the values; yes or no. People would either have or might have or not have an official title deed and they have or have not access credit. A concept that cannot take different values is not a variable. For example, in the question; why did the public transport system fail? The only value possible is failure. In this case, it would be better to talk about the public transport system performance then about public transport system failure. Performance can take different values while failure takes only one. Explanatory and testing research questions question the relation between dependent and independent variable. The independent variable is the concept that is supposed to influence a certain event or condition. The affected event or condition, we call the dependent variable. In other words, the dependent variable depends upon the independent variable or variables. For example, in the research question, how does Foreign Direct Investment contribute to urban economic development. Foreign Direct Investment is the independent variable and urban economic development is the dependent variable. Or another example, what explains the land price increase in the capital city? In this case, what is the independent variable? Land price increase is the dependent variable. What can be replaced by which factors? It points out that the nature of the independent variable or variables is yet unknown. The nature of these unknown variables can be discovered in empirical research or in theoretical expectations and research from prior research. A research question is often supported by a set of sub-questions. The general rule for sub-questions is that together, they answer the main question. This means that they fully cover the main question but they do not question issues beyond the scope of the main question. A much-used way of formulating sub-questions is that of corroborative knowledge. You break down the main question into components of knowledge you need to have to be able to answer the main question. The sub-questions are formulated at the same or a lower level of research objective than the main question. For an explanatory question, subject questions can be descriptive or explanatory, but not testing. Now, if you look again at Julia's thesis, we see that she has come to the following research question. How do bank and household loan application criteria explain the level of credit use by the beneficiaries of the land titling projects? It's explanatory. In a theoretical review, she has come to understand that several factors can be of influence to this level of credit use. On the one hand, formal banks and the requirements may influence actual access, and on the other hand, households need for credit and risk assessment may influence their actual demand. Therefore, Julia has formulated the following sub-questions. Firstly, what are the lending criteria banks apply to the poor? Secondly, what is the household's need for credit? Thirdly, what is the household's risk assessment regarding credit? Now, these are all descriptive questions. It is in a way of combining the answers to these questions that the main question can be answered. This is the end of the first week on Research Methods and Techniques. We have seen that the first steps in designing a research deal with demarcating the problem, formulating the objective, and formulating the research question. These are all based on the level of existing knowledge on the problem. The research question is the main guide for the next step, the theoretical review, which will be explained in the next week. The theoretical review may give new and further insights on the problem. You may come to the conclusion that your research objective and questions are already covered at length. Now, if this happens, your research objective and question and also your problem statement have to be reformulated. Now, this is quite normal to happen. Developing a research proposal is an iterative process. That is, that every step you take may have consequences for the following steps, but also for the previous steps. Previous steps may have to be revised several times. It is therefore good to think about your first research question as being preliminary. Thank you for watching and see you next week.
