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Waiting to Get Your Dissertation Accepted?
Last Updated on: 17th May 2024, 05:05 am
If you’re writing a proposal for a qualitative dissertation, you will need to create qualitative research questions. Getting these right the first time means you’ll save time revising and going back and forth with your committee. So, how do you do that? The key is alignment.
By the time you write your qualitative research questions, you should have already written your Problem Statement and Purpose Statement. Your qualitative research questions should be based on your Problem Statement and Purpose Statement.
If your research questions start heading in a different direction from your problem statement, purpose, and title, then your committee will say you’re not in alignment. This means that your research questions will not allow you to address the problem you’ve identified.
Examples of Qualitative Research Questions
Some examples of a qualitative research question include:
“What are the perceptions of teachers in central Arkansas about the use of a high-quality math curriculum?”
“What are the lived experiences of first responders who have worked through a traumatic event?”
“What are the perceptions of hourly employees about policies related to sick time?”
“What do employees in the private security industry report as their perceptions of increased overtime work?”
“What do doctoral students perceive to be the optimal level of support from their committees?”
The research questions will be supported by interview questions. These are the questions you will actually ask study participants. They will provide many rich responses that will then allow you to develop codes and ultimately themes, which will then be used to answer the qualitative research questions.
How to Write a Qualitative Research Question
If you’re doing a qualitative study, you’ll want to make sure that your problem statement says that you’re looking for something like “perceptions” or “lived experiences” as opposed to “significance” or “relationships.” That’s because in qualitative research, we don’t deal with significance or relationships. We don’t involve enough people to be able to use statistical tests that generate reliable and significant results.
However, what we can do in qualitative research is understand people’s perceptions, lived experiences, and the approaches they take to address problems.
With qualitative research questions, we do not have null and alternative hypotheses as we do in quantitative research. We just have research questions. Null and alternative hypotheses are part of quantitative testing, and we aren’t testing in qualitative research.
Keep Your Research Questions Specific
In the design of the qualitative research question, if you stick to the problem statement and purpose, you will not find yourself with questions that, while interesting, will not allow you to address the problem statement.
For example, let’s say the Problem Statement is, “Hourly employee’s perceptions of transformational leadership in the food and beverage industry in Northern Illinois is unknown.”
A too-broad research question is, “What are employees perceptions of their leaders?” Here you’ll find out about their leaders, but you won’t find out about transformational leadership. You might also find out about leaders in other industries or other locations.
A better research question would be: “What are employee perceptions of leaders who use transformational leadership style in the food and beverage industry in Northern Illinois?”
Over 50% of doctoral candidates don’t finish their dissertations.
Avoid Leading Questions
You want to make sure that your research questions and interview questions are as objective as possible and not designed to get a specific answer. For example, if an interview question was, “how much do you like the new healthcare plan?” you’ve pretty much defined the field as they like it. You’re assuming they like it. You’ve come up with a biased question. And biased questions give you biased answers and your results end up having little validity.
This gets to the notion of “just answering the question” as opposed to “I know that I want to prove a specific idea or concept when doing my research.” Your job is to answer the question. You add a little more information to the pile of knowledge so that we overall start to understand things.
For example, in 1930, we proved that Pluto was a planet. Then in 2007, we determined that Pluto was no longer a planet. And now, we’re reconsidering it. The word “proof” is difficult in any research. Rather than trying to prove something, we simply add a little more knowledge to the field. Then over time, it becomes the preponderance of evidence that leads us to support a certain position, until there’s evidence contrary.
So in the creation of knowledge in the scientific method, if you come up with a new theory, it has to do everything the old theory did and more, if it’s going to take its place.
Qualitative Research Questions: Summary
Qualitative research questions work best when they are designed in concert with your problem statement and purpose, are specific, are not leading, and lead to the ability to address the problem as stated in the research.
