The Research Question / Polina Zioga / 14th October

Understanding how to develop a research question, was the topic of today. A good research question talks about your research subject and reveals how you will investigate your research subject. It will provide direction and become a guide to what you research, acting as the spinal cord of a body of research. Helping to narrow down research, instead of aimlessly researching anything and everything. Plus, it helps you stay on track and not stray away from the subject at hand, which can happen when you write a lot without a solidified focus from the beginning.

It was explained to us how you create a research question. First you state your subject and interests and create a title. Then research around the area and highlight all of the relevant information that intrigues you the most ticking all the boxes that you want to investigate. From this you should be able to build a research question. Below is an example to summarise, investigating Scandinavian graphic design.

After, I put what I had learnt to practice to create my own research question. My area of interest for my project is to raise awareness of criminality online through interactivity with anonymous profiles. In pairs, we both pulled out questions from each others title and gave feedback of what and how to research to create a research question.

Questions we pulled out from my title include
'investigate stories that have happened'
'tricks and illusions the criminals set in place that make you mistake and interact'
'types of crime online'
'who are targeted / different ages? / old people scans / credit card scams / young?'
'Technologies influence, before and now'

From this discussion about research angles and feedback, I have an idea of where I could take my research and create a research question. I could create a research question to focus on certain topics within my broad title. For example, I could create a research question focusing on specific targets and specific crimes, credit card fraud or determining whether old or young people are more vulnerable to criminality online through anonymous profiles.