How many research questions should you create?

I’m a fan of “less is more” when it comes to research questions, but again, the four elements above will dictate how many you need. Another factor – possibly a fifth one to consider – is how many does your dissertation chair want you to have? That will always be a consideration. However, remember this: the number of research questions you have will determine how you divide up your data and report on it in chapter four. Thus, if you have four research questions, then you will have to divide up the reporting of your data into four discrete parts with each research question as a heading. If you have two research questions, you will divide the reporting of your data into two discrete parts. Further warning, though: I’ve worked with many dissertation writers who believe more research questions are better, and then end up having to figure out how to split their data in a way that the answers to each research question is unique from the rest. Making it not sound redundant is challenging.

Pulling it together

Given the pieces of the puzzle I’ve listed above, let’s draft some research questions.

How do nursing educators describe their experiences in teaching ASN nursing students using full body patient simulators in a remote environment?

Note my setup of the question – how do they describe their experiences? That addresses my descriptive approach. This question is almost a rephrasing of the purpose statement as a question.

How do nursing educators describe the mastery experiences that influenced their strategies used in teaching with full-body patient simulators in a remote environment?

Here I’ve used describe again, and now I’m bringing in one of the tenets of self-efficacy theory that I will be using in my study – mastery experiences.

How do nursing educators describe the social models that influenced their strategies used in teaching with full-body patient simulators in a remote environment?

This question is similar to the one above it, but uses a different tenet of self-efficacy theory. Here I will stop with my questions. In this made-up research study, I am only going to use two of the tenets of self-efficacy theory and I’ve created research questions around them. Looking over my three questions, I see that two are different enough from each other – addressing mastery experiences and another addressing social models – to gather unique data to result in clearly discrete parts in my write-up in chapter 4. The first question is broader and gives room for me to create interview questions that perhaps align with the themes in the literature. In the next post, I will show you how to develop your interview questions for your research to ensure that they are an outgrowth of your research questions and written in a way that will engage your participants, generating good data for your study. So, did you learn how to develop research questions? Let us know where you are in developing your research questions in the comments below.