Since all dissertations aim to answer one or more research questions (and/or hypotheses), understanding how to create research questions that are appropriate for your dissertation is essential. Even though research questions are typically just a single sentence in length, they tell the reader a great deal about your dissertation, from its overarching purpose, through to the area of the literature you are interested in, and the components of research strategy guiding your dissertation. A well-constructed research question sets a positive tone for your whole dissertation. A poorly constructed research question will not only be much more challenging to answer, but will also make it difficult for the person marking your dissertation to understand what you are trying to achieve.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview to the section of this website on Research Questions [coming soon]. Starting with this article, we aim to help guide you through the process of: (1) choosing the type of research question that is appropriate to achieve your research aims (i.e. research questions can be quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods in nature); (2) selecting the appropriate sub-types of research question that you are trying to answer (e.g. there are three types of quantitative research question: descriptive, comparative and relationship-based research questions); and (3) understanding how to properly construct (i.e. write out) the different types (and sub-types) of research questions you have chosen to answer in your dissertation.

Creating research questions (and/or hypotheses) for your dissertation requires three steps:

1. Choosing the right type of research question
2. Selecting the right sub-types of research question
3. Constructing your research questions

We discuss each of these steps in turn, providing links to the articles in the Research Questions [coming soon] section of this website that provide the detail you need to understand how to create the research questions (and/or hypotheses) that are appropriate in your dissertation.

1. Choosing the right type of research question

There are three broad types of research question:

1. Quantitative research questions
2. Qualitative research questions
3. Mixed methods research questions

These research questions fit the research design that you choose to follow in your dissertation. Research designs, which are discussed at length in the section, Research Designs [coming soon], can be either:

1. Quantitative research designs
2. Qualitative research designs
3. Mixed methods research designs

As you may have worked out from the above, the type of research question you are trying to answer fits with the corresponding type of research design (e.g. a quantitative research design should be used to guide a dissertation attempting to answer a quantitative research question). Therefore, your dissertation should only attempt to answer one of these types of research question (i.e. a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research question). The only occasion where you will attempt to answer both quantitative and qualitative research questions is if you want to set one or more mixed methods research questions since this type of research question includes components of both quantitative and qualitative research questions.

Since you should only choose one of these three types of research question to answer in your dissertation, the key question is:

How do I choose the right type of research question? In other words, what type of research question is appropriate for my dissertation?

The simple answer is that there is no ‘right’ answer. Your dissertation can be guided by any of these three types of research question. However, you must still be able to justify why you have chosen one type of research question over another (e.g. a qualitative research question over a quantitative research question). Typically, this justification comes down to one or more of the following three factors:

1. Personal preferences
2. The purpose of your research
3. The research paradigm guiding your research

Each of these is discussed in turn.

1. Personal preferences

At the undergraduate and master’s level, many students will simply choose to use quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research questions based on personal preferences. By personal preferences, we mean that students’ find it easier to perform research in a particular way, typically based on the things that (a) they do best and/or (b) find the easiest.

For example:
Dissertations that aim to answer quantitative research questions also tend to follow a post-positivist research paradigm and a quantitative research design, employing experimental or survey methods, whilst using statistical techniques to analyse the data that has been collected. They also tend to test or build on a particular theory (or theories), which are established early on in the research process. Whilst we discuss these different aspects of theory building and research strategy in their own sections [see Theory Building coming soon and Research Strategy coming soon], the key point is that these types of quantitative dissertation, which attempt to answer quantitative research questions:

1. can be more easily planned from the outset than qualitative or mixed methods research designs;


2. address specific theories that can be set out at the start of the dissertation process;


3. rely more heavily on quantitative data analysis techniques.

For these reasons, quantitative dissertations, which attempt to answer quantitative research questions, are often preferred by students who like:

1. greater certainty in the things that they do;


2. to be able to plan things out from the start;


3. to work with numbers (i.e. data and statistical analysis).

Whilst it is not a good academic justification for choosing to answer quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research questions, it is very common for students to base their choice on such personal preferences. At the end of the day, it makes sense to play to your strengths. That being said, if you can also justify your choices based on (a) the purpose of your research and/or (b) the research paradigm guiding your research; both of which are discussed below, more the better!

2. The purpose of your research

When you choose a topic to do your dissertation on, one of the main criteria is that your dissertation topic is considered to be significant.

Whilst dissertations are rarely ground-breaking at the undergraduate or master’s level (and are not expected to be), they should still be significant in some way. In a dissertation context, significance means that your research has value. It means that you can justify the contribution that you dissertation will make to the literature; it explains why anyone should bother performing such research; in other words, what is the value of your dissertation?

In the article, Why is your research significant? [coming soon], we discuss six of the ways that your dissertation could be significant. It may:

• Capitalise on a recent event
• Reflect a break from the past
• Target a new audience
• Address a flaw in a previous study
• Expand a particular field of study
• Help an individual, group, organisation, or community

The question arises:

What does the significance of my dissertation have to do with the type of research question I choose?

To answer this question, let’s look at two of the types of significance mentioned in the bullet points above: reflecting a break from the past and addressing a flaw in a previous study.

• A break from the past could reflect the desire to approach a problem or issue from a different perspective, often involving a different research strategy (i.e. a different research paradigm and research design). For example, a previous study may have looked at bulk discounts and purchasing behaviour amongst university students, drawing on a post-positivist research paradigm and a quantitative research design, answering quantitative research questions. However, you make the case that such a research strategy, especially one that draws on a post-positivist research paradigm, cannot capture the nuances and essence of consumer behaviour (i.e. in this case, purchasing behaviour, which is one aspect of consumer behaviour). Instead, you feel justified to create a qualitative research question to study bulk discounts and purchasing behaviour amongst university students, drawing on an interpretivist research paradigm and a qualitative research design.


• A previous study may have a flaw that reflects the type of research question that was used. For example, perhaps researchers used a quantitative research design to answer a quantitative research question about employee commitment in a Fortune 500 company, collecting data using a survey. However, you feel that the reliability of the survey and the external validity of the findings should be questioned because the study failed to perform any post-survey tests of reliability and validity. You feel that qualitative research methods, such as interviews could have helped to initially check the fit of the standardised survey for the organisation in question, as well as interviewing a sample of the survey respondents to ensure that the survey questions captured the essence of the phenomenon (i.e. employee commitment) that you were measuring. This would point to a new study involving a mixed methods research design and a mixed methods research question.

In the article, Research questions and research significance [coming soon], we provide examples for each of these different types of research significance to help you understand how the significance underpinning your dissertation may influence the type of research question you choose to answer (i.e. a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research question).

3. The research paradigm guiding your research

Finally, the research paradigm guiding your research can also affect the appropriate choice of research question you should set.

Simply put, we all have basic sets of beliefs that guide the way that we perform research. Before doing a dissertation, you may not know what these are or what to call them. When doing research, we summarise these beliefs under so-called research paradigms. There are a number of these research paradigms (e.g. positivism, post-positivism, critical theory and constructivism).

For most students, getting your head around these research paradigms is one of, if not the most challenging part of the whole dissertation process. Unfortunately, it is important because the beliefs that you have, whether you know what these are or not, guide the way that you do your dissertation in a very practical way. This is because these beliefs tend to determine everything from your choice of research questions and research design, through to the research methods you select, the data analysis techniques you use, and even the way that you assess the quality of your findings. We have dedicated a whole section of this website to Research Paradigms [coming soon].

Whilst we cannot say with certainty that one particular research paradigm is appropriate for any one of the three types of research question, we can make some generalisations. We might suggest the following combinations:

A positivist research paradigm fits with the use of quantitative research questions, as well as hypotheses.

A post-positivist research paradigm would typically involve quantitative research questions, as well as hypotheses. However, it may also be appropriate to set mixed methods research questions, especially where the quantitative components of these mixed methods research questions are the focus of your dissertation.

A research paradigm based on interpretivism or constructivism fits with the use of qualitative research questions. However, it may also be appropriate to set mixed methods research questions, especially where the qualitative components of these mixed methods research questions are the focus of your dissertation.

A research paradigm based on critical theory fits with the use of qualitative research questions.

If you can get your head around these different types of research paradigm, it is worthwhile taking into account your beliefs (i.e. the research paradigm representing your beliefs) when choosing which type of research question to answer in your dissertation (i.e. a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research question). To learn more about this, we discuss the fit between the different components of research strategy that guide a dissertation (i.e. research paradigms, research designs, etc.) and the three types of research question in the article: Research strategy and research questions [coming soon].

Once you have chosen the right type of research question for your dissertation, the next step is to select the right sub-types of research question. We discuss this next.

2. Selecting the right sub-types of research question

At this stage, you would have selected one of the three types of research question to answer (i.e., either a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research question). However, each of these broad types of research question has their own types (i.e. sub-types) of research question.

For example:
There are three types of quantitative research questions: descriptive, comparative and relationship-based quantitative research questions. Each of these types of quantitative research question has different aims. Depending on the goals of the dissertation, these three types of quantitative research question can also require different research designs (i.e. experimental, quasi-experimental or non-experimental) and data analysis techniques (i.e. different descriptive and/or inferential statistical techniques). For example:

• Descriptive research questions simply aim to describe the dependent variables you are measuring; that is, descriptive research questions aim to quantify the variables you are interested in. An example descriptive research question would be: How often do university students in the United States use Facebook on a daily basis? In this example, daily Facebook usage is the dependent variable and university students in the United States is the single group we are interested in. This question could be answered using a non-experimental, quantitative research design, survey methods, and statistical analysis techniques (i.e. probably descriptive statistics).


• Comparative research questions aim to compare the differences between two or more groups on the dependent and/or independent variables you are measuring. An example comparative research question would be: What is the difference in daily Facebook usage amongst university students in the United States based on gender? In this example, daily Facebook usage is the dependent variable, just as it was in the previous descriptive research question example. However, there is no longer just one group (i.e. university students in the United States). Since we are now interested in comparing the differences in Facebook usage based on gender, we have two groups: (1) male university students in the United States and (2) female university students in the United States. Similarly to the descriptive research question example, this comparative research question could be answered using a non-experimental, quantitative research design and survey methods. However, instead of using descriptive statistics, it may be more appropriate to use inferential statistics to analyse the data collected.


• Relationship-based research questions aim to look for relationships (i.e. trends, associations, interactions, causal relationships) between the independent and dependent variable(s) you are measuring for one or more groups. An example relationship-based research question would be: What is the relationship between age and daily Facebook usage amongst university students in the United States? In this example, daily Facebook usage is the dependent variable, age is the independent variable, and university students in the United States is the single group we are interested in. Similar to the descriptive and comparative research questions set, this relationship-based research question could be answered using a non-experimental, quantitative research design and survey methods. Like the comparative research question, inferential statistics would be used to analyse the data collected. However, since the relationship-based question aims to look for relationships (i.e. trends, associations, interactions, causal relationships), whilst the comparative research question aims to compare differences, the type of inferential statistical analysis performed would not be the same.

In the event, you may choose to set a number of quantitative research questions. Taking the example about daily Facebook usage above, you could choose to answer all three types of quantitative research question, especially if the overall goal of your research was to understand more about daily Facebook usage amongst university students in the United States, which is a broader question than each of the three types of quantitative research question that were presented above.

Whilst these are example of the different types of quantitative research question, qualitative and mixed methods research questions also have their own types (i.e. sub-types) of research question. Therefore, once you have decided whether you are trying to address quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research questions in your dissertation, you will also need to decide what sub-types of research question you plan to create. At the end of this article, we provide links to other articles in the Research Questions section of this website that will help you to learn more about these types and sub-types of research question.

3. Constructing your research questions

Once you have decided not only the broad type of research question you are trying to answer (i.e. quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research questions), but also the particular sub-types (e.g. descriptive, comparative and/or relationship-based quantitative research questions), you need to construct these research questions; that is, you need to write out your research questions in a way that the reader can clearly understand what you are trying to answer in your dissertation.

How you construct each of your research questions will depend on the type and sub-type of research question you are trying to construct. Since there are many different ways to construct research questions (and hypotheses), we have created specific articles to illustrate this for each type and sub-type of research question.

To start the process of choosing an appropriate research question for your dissertation, we would recommend that you read the following introductory articles to each of the three types of research question (i.e. quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods). If you are thinking about creating quantitative research questions, it will also be necessary to read up on research hypotheses and null hypotheses:

• Quantitative research questions: What do I have to think about?


• Research hypotheses and null hypotheses: What do I have to think about?


• Qualitative research questions: What do I have to think about?


• Mixed methods research questions: What do I have to think about?

We hope this helps!