Developing a research question?

[ChildPsychEnthusiast]

Hi everyone,

I am in a Mcnair program and I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to develop a thesis proposal. Specifically, I am focusing on ODD (Oppositional defiant disorder) for my capstone course and so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and develop a proposal for Mcnair on the same subject. Usually a capstone lasts about two semesters so I am being indoctrinated slowly by my mentor (whom work focuses on child psychopathologies) ,I've pull a ton of research and am now focusing on what causes ODD within just its environmental risk factors.

But, Mcnair is going at much quicker pace and so I need to develop a research question and a problem statement soon in order to begin to develop my proposal. I've been reading all my research articles but I have yet to come up with a specific question.

This is my first time I've gotten into anything like the Mcnair program, so I want to do my best.

Does anyone have any advice or direction on where I should go or what I should be looking for when developing a research question?
 

Thank you for your time.

[sing something]

Look at the suggestions for future research in the discussion sections of relevant articles. See if you can think of a method for answering a question that other researchers in the field have identified as being important.

[Linelei]

Have you discussed the McNair research requirements with your mentor? Sometimes mentors have great ideas for projects you can take on that fit with their existing research lines. This approach is great for people new to research, because you have an expert on hand to help with all the theoretical questions/issues that come up. The mentor usually likes it, too, because they might have had a little idea bouncing around but didn't want to stick a grad student on a small project. Just be sure to make the timeline and restrictions clear, as you are probably going to want a project that is very limited in scope due to time constraints.

[olayak]

Find a journal article of research that you're interested in. they usually say something about suggested future experiments to expand on their work. That's a good starting place. Build on the work that's already out there!

[lewin]

Find a journal article of research that you're interested in. they usually say something about suggested future experiments to expand on their work. That's a good starting place. Build on the work that's already out there!

 

This might be a good starting point to get creative juices flowing, but usually we joke that "future directions" are the studies that are about to be sent out for review.

[olayak]

True but they're a good starting place!