2.1 Find a Question in Your Topic
2.1.2 Make Your Topic Manageable
2.2 Propose Some Working Answers
2.2.1 Decide on a Working Hypothesis
2.2.2 Beware the Risks in a Working Hypothesis
2.2.3 If You Can’t Find an Answer, Argue for Your Question
2.3 Build a Storyboard to Plan and Guide Your Work
2.3.1 State Your Question and Working Hypotheses
A research project is more than collecting data. You start it before you log on to the Internet or head for the library, and you continue it long after you have all the data you think you need. In that process, you face countless specific tasks, but they all aim at just five general goals. You must do the following:
■ Ask a question worth answering.
■ Find an answer that you can support with good reasons.
■ Find reliable evidence to support your reasons.
■ Draft a report that makes a good case for your answer.
■ Revise that draft until readers will think you met the first four goals.
You might even post those five goals in your workspace.
Research projects would be easy if you could march straight through those steps. But as you’ve discovered (or soon will), research and its reporting are never straightforward. As you do one task, you’ll have to look ahead to others or revisit an earlier one. You’ll change topics as you read, search for more data as you draft, perhaps even discover a new question as you revise. Research is looping, messy, and unpredictable. But it’s manageable if you have a plan, even when you know you’ll depart from it.
Researchers begin projects in different ways. Many experienced ones begin with a question that others in their field want to answer: What caused the extinction of most large North American mammals? Others begin with just a vague intellectual itch that they have to scratch. They might not know what puzzles them about giant sloths and mastodons, but they’re willing to spend time finding out whether they can translate their itch into a question worth answering.
They know, moreover, that the best research question is not one whose answer others want to know just for its own sake; it is one that helps them understand some larger issue (So what? again). For example, if we knew why North American sloths disappeared, we might be able to answer a larger question that puzzles many historical anthropologists: Did early Native Americans live in harmony with nature, as some believe, or did they hunt its largest creatures to extinction? (And if we knew that, then we might also understand …)
Then there are those questions that just pop into a researcher’s mind with no hint of where they’ll lead, sometimes about matters so seemingly trivial that only the researcher thinks they’re worth answering: Why does a coffee spill dry up in the form of a ring? Such a question might lead nowhere, but you can’t know that until you see its answer. In fact, the scientist puzzled by coffee rings made discoveries about the behavior of fluids that others in his field thought important—and that paint manufacturers found valuable. So who knows where you might go with a question like How many cats slept in the Alamo the night before the battle? You can’t know until you get there.
In fact, a researcher’s most valuable ability is the knack of being puzzled by ordinary things: like the shape of coffee rings; or why Shakespeare has Lady Macbeth die offstage rather than on; or why your eyebrows don’t grow as long as the hair on your head. Cultivate the ability to see what’s odd in the commonplace and you’ll never lack for research projects, as either a student or a professional.
If you have a topic, skip to 2.1.3 to find questions in it. If you already have a question or two, skip to 2.1.4 to test them by the criteria listed there. If you’re still looking for a topic, here’s a plan to help you search for one.
If you can pick any topic appropriate to your field, ask these questions:
■ What topics do you already know something about? You can learn more.
■ What would you like to know more about? A place? A person? A time? An object? An idea? A process?
■ Can you find a discussion list on the Internet about issues that interest you?
■ Have you taken positions on any issues in your field in debates with others but found that you couldn’t back up your views with good reasons and evidence?
■ What issues do people outside your field misunderstand?
■ What topic is your instructor working on? Would she like you to explore a part of it? Don’t be too shy to ask.
■ Does your library have rich resources in some field? Ask your instructor or a librarian.
■ What other courses will you take in your field or out of it? Find a text-book and skim it for study questions.
■ If you have a job in mind, what kind of research report might help you get it? Employers often ask for samples of an applicant’s work.
You can also consult print sources for ideas:
■ Skim the topics in specialized indexes in your field such as Philosopher’s Index, Geographical Abstracts, Women’s Studies Abstracts, and so on (in the bibliography, see items in category 2 in your field).
■ Skim a journal that reviews the year’s work in your field (in the bibliography, see items in category 2 in your field).
Academic research is meant to be shared, but the understanding it brings may also be valuable to you in the future. So think ahead: look for a project that might help you a year from now. Keep in mind, though, that you may be in for a long relationship with your topic, so be sure it interests you enough to get you through the inevitable rocky stretches.
If you pick a topic whose name sounds like an encyclopedia entry—bridges, birds, masks—you’ll find so many sources that you could spend a lifetime reading them. You must carve out of your topic a manageable piece. You can start before you head to the library by limiting your topic to reflect a special interest in it: What is it about, say, masks that made you choose them? What particular aspect of them interests or puzzles you? Think about your topic in a context that you know something about, then add words and phrases to reflect that knowledge:
masks in religious ceremonies
masks as symbols in Hopi religious ceremonies
mudhead masks as symbols of sky spirits in Hopi fertility ceremonies
You might not be able to focus your topic until after you start reading about it. That takes time, so start early (you can do much of this preliminary work online):
■ Begin with an overview of your topic in a general encyclopedia (in the bibliography see items in category 2 in the general sources); then read about it in a specialized one (see items in category 2 in your field).
■ Skim a survey of your topic (encyclopedia entries usually cite a few).
■ Skim subheads under your topic in an annual bibliography in your field (in the bibliography, see items in category 4 in your field). That will also give you a start on a reading list.
■ Search the Internet for the topic (but evaluate the reliability of what you find; see 3.4.3).
Especially useful are topics that spark debate: Fisher claims that Halloween masks reveal children’s archetypal fears, but do they? Even if you can’t resolve the debate, you can learn how such debates are conducted (for more on this, see 3.1.2).
Do this not just once, early on, but throughout your project. Ask questions as you read, especially how and why (see also 4.1.1–4.1.2). Try the following kinds of questions (the categories are loose and overlap, so don’t worry about keeping them distinct).
1. Ask how the topic fits into a larger context (historical, social, cultural, geographic, functional, economic, and so on):
■ How does your topic fit into a larger story? What came before masks? How did masks come into being? Why? What changes have they caused in other parts of their social or geographic setting? How and why did that happen? Why have masks become a part of Halloween? How and why have masks helped make Halloween the biggest American holiday after Christmas?
■ How is your topic a functioning part of a larger system? How do masks reflect the values of specific societies and cultures? What roles do masks play in Hopi dances? In scary movies? In masquerade parties? For what purposes are masks used other than disguise? How has the booming market for kachina masks influenced traditional designs?
■ How does your topic compare to and contrast with other topics like it? How do masks in Native American ceremonies differ from those in Africa? What do Halloween masks have to do with Mardi Gras masks? How are masks and cosmetic surgery alike?
2. Ask questions about the nature of the thing itself, as an independent entity:
■ How has your topic changed through time? Why? What is its future? How have Halloween masks changed? Why? How have Native American masks changed? Why?
■ How do the parts of your topic fit together as a system? What parts of a mask are most significant in Hopi ceremonies? Why? Why do some masks cover only the eyes? Why do so few masks cover just the bottom half of the face?
■ How many different categories of your topic are there? What are the different kinds of Halloween masks? What are the different qualities of masks? What are the different functions of Halloween masks?
3. Turn positive questions into a negative ones: Why have masks not become a part of Christmas? How do Native American masks not differ from those in Africa? What parts of masks are typically not significant in religious ceremonies?
4. Ask speculative questions: Why are masks common in African religions but not in Western ones? Why are children more comfortable wearing Halloween masks than are most adults? Why don’t hunters in camouflage wear masks?
5. Ask What if? questions: how would things be different if your topic never existed, disappeared, or were put into a new context? What if no one ever wore masks except for safety reasons? What if everyone wore masks in public? What if movies and TV were like Greek plays and all the actors wore masks? What if it were customary to wear masks on blind dates? In marriage ceremonies? At funerals?
6. Ask questions that reflect disagreements with a source: if a source makes a claim you think is weakly supported or even wrong, make that disagreement a question (see also 4.1.2). Martinez claims that carnival masks uniquely allow wearers to escape social norms. But I think religious masks also allow wearers to escape from the material realm to the spiritual. Is there a larger pattern of all masks creating a sense of alternative forms of social or spiritual life?
7. Ask questions that build on agreement: if a source offers a claim you think is persuasive, ask questions that extend its reach (see also 4.1.1). Elias shows that masked balls became popular in eighteenth-century London in response to anxiety about social mobility. Is the same anxiety responsible for similar developments in other European capitals? You can also ask a question that supports the same claim with additional evidence. Elias supports his claim about masked balls entirely with published sources. Is it also supported by evidence from unpublished sources such as letters and diaries?
8. Ask questions analogous to those that others have asked about similar topics. Smith analyzed the Battle of Gettysburg from an economic point of view. What would an economic analysis of the Battle of the Alamo turn up?
9. Look for questions that other researchers pose but don’t answer. Many journal articles end with a paragraph or two about open questions, ideas for more research, and so on. You might not be able to do all the research they suggest, but you might carve out a piece of it.
10. Find an Internet discussion list on your topic, then “lurk,” just reading the exchanges to understand the kinds of questions those on the list discuss. If you can’t find a list using a search engine, ask a teacher or visit the website of professional organizations in your field. Look for questions that spark your interest. You can even ask a question of the list, so long as it is very specific and narrowly focused, but wait until you see whether questions from students are welcomed.
Not all answers are equally useful, so evaluate your questions and scrap those that are unlikely to yield interesting answers. Reconsider when the following is true.
1. You can answer the question too easily.
■ You can look it up: What masks are used in Navajo dances?
■ You can summarize a source: What does Fisher say about masks and fears?
2. You can’t find good evidence to support the answer.
■ No relevant facts exist: Are Mayan masks modeled on space aliens?
■ The question is based on preference or taste: Are Balinese or Mayan masks more beautiful?
■ You must read too many sources: How are masks made? You don’t want to plow through countless reports to find the best evidence (this usually results from a question that’s too broad).
■ You can’t get the sources that your readers think are crucial. In even moderately advanced projects, you’ll be expected to work with the best sources available; for a thesis and dissertation, they’re essential. If you can’t obtain those sources, find another question.
3. You can’t plausibly disprove the answer.
■ The answer seems self-evident because the evidence overwhelmingly favors one answer. How important are masks in Inuit culture? The answer is obvious: Very. If you can’t imagine disproving a claim, then proving it is pointless. (On the other hand, world-class reputations have been won by those who questioned a claim that seemed self-evidently true—for instance, that the sun circled the earth—and dared to disprove it.)
Don’t reject a question because you think someone must already have asked it. Until you know, pursue its answer as if you asked first. Even if someone has answered it, you might come up with a better answer or at least one with a new slant. In fact, in the humanities and social sciences the best questions usually have more than one good answer. You can also organize your project around comparing and contrasting competing answers and supporting the best one (see 6.2.5).
The point is to find a question that you want to answer. Too many students, both graduate and undergraduate, think that the aim of education is to memorize settled answers to someone else’s questions. It is not. It is to learn to find your own answers to your own questions. To do that, you must learn to wonder about things, to let them puzzle you—particularly things that seem most commonplace.
Before you get deep into your project, try one more step. It is one that some beginners resist but that experienced researchers usually attempt. Once you have a question, imagine some plausible answers, no matter how sketchy or speculative. At this stage, don’t worry whether they’re right. That comes later.
For example, suppose you ask, Why do some religions use masks in ceremonies while others don’t? You might speculate,
Maybe cultures with many spirits need masks to distinguish them.
Maybe masks are common in cultures that mix religion and medicine.
Maybe religions originating in the Middle East were influenced by the Jewish prohibition against idolatry.
Even a general answer can suggest something worth studying:
Maybe it has to do with the role of masks in nonreligious areas of a culture.
Try to imagine at least one plausible answer, no matter how tentative or speculative. If after lots of research you can’t confirm it, you can organize your report around why that answer seemed reasonable at the time but turned out to be wrong and so isn’t worth the time of other researchers. That in itself can be a valuable contribution to the conversation on your topic. (See 10.1.1–10.1.2 for how to use an apparently good idea that turns out to be wrong.)
In fact, look for two or three plausible answers. Even if you prefer one, you can improve it by testing it against the others, and in any event, you can’t show that an answer is right if you can’t also show why others are wrong. Even early in the project, write out your answers as clearly and as fully as you can. It is too easy to think that you have a clear idea when you don’t. Putting a foggy idea into words is the best way to clarify it, or to discover that you can’t.
If one answer seems promising, call it your working hypothesis and use it to guide your research. You can, of course, look for evidence with no more than a question to guide you, because any question limits the number of plausible answers. But even the most tentative working hypothesis helps you to think ahead, especially about the kind of evidence that you’ll need to support it. Will you need numbers? quotations? observations? images? historical facts? More important, what kind of evidence would disprove your hypothesis? Answer those questions and you know the kind of data to watch for and to keep. In fact, until you have a hypothesis, you can’t know whether any data you collect are relevant to any question worth asking.
If you can’t imagine any working hypothesis, reconsider your question. Review your list of exploratory questions to find one that you can answer; if you skipped that step, go back to 2.1.3. You may even decide to start over with a new topic. That costs time in the short run, but it may save you from a failed project. If you’re working on a thesis or dissertation, you can wait longer to firm up a hypothesis while you read and ponder, but don’t get deeply into your project without at least the glimmer of a possible answer.
Under no circumstances should you put off thinking about a hypothesis until you begin drafting your report or, worse, until you’ve almost finished it. You might not settle on the best answer to your question until you’ve written your last page: writing, even revising, is itself an act of discovery. Just don’t wait until that last page to start thinking about some answer.
It is a bad idea to settle on a final answer too soon. But many new researchers and some experienced ones are afraid to consider any working hypothesis early in their project, even one they hold lightly, because they fear it might bias their thinking. There is some risk of that, but a working hypothesis need not close your mind to a better one. Even the most objective scientist devises an experiment to test for just a few predicted outcomes, often just one. In fact, researchers who don’t state a hypothesis usually have one in mind but don’t want to seem publicly committed to it, lest it turn out wrong.
A working hypothesis is a risk only if it blinds you to a better one or if you can’t give it up when the evidence says you should. So as in all relationships, don’t fall too hard for your first hypothesis: the more you like it, the less easily you’ll see its flaws. Despite that risk, it’s better to start with a flawed hypothesis than with none at all.
We have focused on questions so much that you might think that your project fails if you can’t answer yours. In fact, much important research explains why a question no one has asked should be, even though the researcher can’t answer it: Do turtles dream? Why is yawning contagious but being sleepy isn’t? Or is it? Such reports focus on why the question is important and what a good answer might look like. Or you may find that someone has answered your question, but incompletely or even, if you’re lucky, incorrectly. If you can’t find the right answer, you help readers by showing that a widely accepted one is wrong. (See 10.1.2 for how to use this plan in your introduction.)
Only when you ask question after question will you develop the critical imagination you’ll need in any profession you pursue. In fact, as experienced researchers know, most issues have few, if any, final answers, because there are no final questions. They know that it’s as important to ask a new question as it is to answer an old one, and that one day their new question will become old and yield to a newer researcher’s still newer one.
Your job is to become that newer researcher.
For a short paper, you might not need a detailed plan—a sketch of an outline might do. But for a long project, you’ll usually need more, especially for one as long as a thesis or dissertation. The first plan that comes to mind is usually an outline, with its I’s and II’s and A’s and B’s and so on (see 23.4.2.2). If you prefer an outline, use one, especially if your project is relatively short. The problem is that an outline can force you to specify too much too soon and so lock up a final form before you’ve done your best thinking.
To avoid that risk, many researchers, including those outside the academic world, plan long reports on a storyboard. A storyboard is like an outline spread over several pages, with lots of space for adding data and ideas as you go. It is more flexible than an outline: it can help you plan your search for evidence, organize your argument, write a first draft, and test a final one. As opposed to lines in an outline, you can physically move storyboard pages around without having to print a new plan every time you try out a new organization. You can spread its pages across a wall, group related pages, and put minor sections below major ones to create a “picture” of your project that shows you at a glance the design of the whole and your progress through it.
To start a storyboard, state at the top of its first page your question and working hypothesis as exactly as you can. Then add plausible alternatives to help you see more clearly its limits and strengths. Add new hypotheses as you think of them, and cross off those you prove wrong. But save them, because you might be able to use one of them in your introduction (see 10.1.1).
Put at the top of separate pages each reason that might support your best hypothesis, even if you have only one or two (for more on reasons, see 5.4.2). Imagine explaining your project to a friend. You say, I want to show that Alamo stories helped develop a unique Texan identity, and your friend asks, Why do you think so? Your reasons are the general statements that you offer to support your answer: Well, first, the stories distorted facts to emphasize what became central to Texan identity; second, the stories were first used to show that Texas (and the Wild West) was a new kind of frontier; third, … and so on.
If you can think of only one or two reasons (you’ll usually need more), put placeholders at the tops of pages: Reason 3: Something about Alamo stories making Texans feel special. If you know only how you want a reason to support your answer, state that: Reason 4: Something to show that Alamo stories were more than just myth. Each reason, of course, needs support, so for each reason, ask Why do I think that? What evidence will I need to prove it? That will help you focus your search for evidence (see 2.3.3 and 5.4.2).
If you’re new to your topic or early in your project, your reasons may be only educated guesses that you’ll change; if you don’t, you might not be self-critical enough. But a list of reasons, no matter how speculative, is the best framework to guide your research and focus your thinking, and certainly better than no reasons at all.
Every field prefers its own kinds of evidence—numbers, quotations, observations, historical facts, images, and so on. So for each reason, sketch the kind of evidence that you think you’ll need to support it. Even imagine what the most convincing evidence would look like. If you can’t imagine the kind of evidence you’ll need, leave that part of the page blank, then read secondary sources to find out the kind of evidence that researchers in your field favor (see 3.1.2).
Lay the pages on a table or tape them on a wall. Then step back and look at their order. When you plan a first draft, you must put its parts in some order, so you might as well think about one now. Can you see a logic in your order? cause and effect? narrative time? relative importance? complexity? length? (See 6.2.5 for more principles of order.) Try out different orders. This storyboard isn’t your final plan; it’s only a tool to guide your thinking and organize what you find.
When you fill a page, try drafting that section, because writing out your ideas can improve your thinking at every stage of your project.
Someday you may have the leisure to amble through sources, reading just what interests you. Such random browsing has opened up important lines of research. But if your report is due in a month or so, you can’t wait for lightning to strike; you need a plan. A storyboard is a simple and reliable device to help you create one.
A down side of scholarly research is its isolation. Except for group projects, you’ll read, think, and write mostly alone. But it doesn’t have to be that way, at least not entirely. Look for someone other than your instructor or advisor who will talk with you about your progress, review your drafts, even pester you about how much you have written. That might be a generous friend, but look first for another writer so that you can comment on each other’s ideas and drafts.
Better yet is a writing group of four or five people working on their own projects who meet regularly to discuss one another’s work. Early on, start each meeting with a summary of each person’s project in that three-part sentence: I’m working on the topic X, because I want to find out Y, so that I (and you) can better understand Z. As your projects develop, start with an “elevator story,” a short summary of your research that you might give someone in the elevator on the way to the meeting. It should include that three-part sentence, a working hypothesis, and the major reasons supporting it (see 13.4).
In later stages, the group shares outlines and drafts so that they can serve as surrogate readers to anticipate how your final readers will respond. If your group has a problem with your draft, so will your final readers. They can even help you brainstorm when you bog down. But for most writers, a writing group is most valuable for the discipline it imposes. It is easier to meet a schedule when you know you must report your progress to others.
Writing groups are standard practice for those preparing theses or dissertations. But the rules may differ for a class paper. Some teachers think that a group or writing partner might provide more help than is appropriate, so be clear with your instructor about what your group will do. If you don’t, she may decide the assistance you have received is inappropriate (see 7.10).