Key Terms and Definitions (Ordered as in Document)
Research Question: A good question gives you focus and puts you in the thick of one controversy (not many). Moreover,
it allows you the opportunity to develop your analytic skills as you weigh concepts, theoretical perspectives, and/or
evidence that relate to the arguments.
Topics: Topics are too broad and contain within them many subissues.
Controversy: A question links you to a controversy and allows you to become engaged in the scholarly and/or policy
debate.
Analytical skills: Developed as you weigh concepts, theoretical perspectives, and/or evidence.
Concepts: Elements you weigh in the course of a research question.
Theoretical perspectives: Frameworks you evaluate as you weigh arguments in scholarly and/or policy debates.
Evidence: Information you evaluate in order to weigh arguments and support claims.
A good research question: Shares six qualities: interesting, important, controversial, short, direct, and doable.
Sometimes also puzzling.
Interesting and important: To you, scholars, the public policy community, and ideally, ordinary citizens.
Short and direct: If your query needs multiple lines or sentences, it still needs refinement.
Doable: You need to pick a question you can actually answer with the resources available to you.
Spiral process: You spiral through this project-even the question-asking part of it-as you learn more about your topic.
Puzzling: Political scientists love these types of queries because they investigate the counterintuitive and promote our
understanding of theory.
Finding Something Interesting: You need to recognize from the outset that finding a good research topic and question
takes effort.
Personal is political: Something that is important to you personally can be a great topic; the personal is political.
Course prompt: Helps guide your topic selection based on class content or requirements.
Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP): A potential legal campaign that students may focus on for a paper.
Say Her Name: A campaign to render visible African American women who have suffered violence at the hands of
police and officials.
Syllabus: More than a schedule; sets out the logic, topics, questions, and often competing arguments for the course.
Textbooks: Useful sources for question generation and for understanding scholarly debates.
Academic databases: Examples include JSTOR, Project MUSE, ProQuest, Web of Science.
Scholarly sources: Provide access to peer-reviewed articles and help determine what the informed debate is about your
issue.
Op-ed: Essays from scholars, practitioners, and other important people that appear opposite the editorial pages.
Journals of opinion: Magazines with political positions; useful for sparking interest.
Report trap: When students choose historical topics and simply describe known information without engaging
analytically.
Interrogatory words: Recommended starting words for research questions: how, why, to what extent.
Normative questions: Questions that start with "should" or "ought"; generally discouraged because they focus on ethics
rather than evidence.
Theory: Conceptual material used to develop a claim that is evaluated on the basis of evidence.
Literature Review: Section that involves using theoretical material to develop your claim.
Research Design: Where evidence is planned and justified.
Analysis and Assessment: Where evidence is presented and evaluated.
Conclusion: Where predictions and implications may be suggested.
Policy-focused questions: Questions that focus on real-world political or legal policies.
Theory-focused questions: Questions that address larger conceptual or theoretical debates.
Middle-range questions: Questions inspired by real-world phenomena requiring both theory and evidence.
Starting Word: The word that begins your research question; should be how, why, or to what extent.
Concept vs. Explanation: The subject you are researching vs. the factor you think might explain it; important to
distinguish.
Self-reflection: Encouraged in the process of generating a research question.
Generating Questions worksheet: Tool used to transform topics into different types of questions.