STAGE 3

Setting research questions and/or hypotheses

Stage three of The Route #1 Process is about setting the research questions and/or hypotheses that you will address in your dissertation. By this stage, you should have chosen (a) the main journal article that will act as the platform for your replication-based dissertation and (b) the route you plan to follow (i.e., Route A: Duplication, Route B: Generalisation or Route C: Extension), as well as the particular approach within that route (e.g., a population-based generalisation within Route B: Generalisation). If you have not, we would recommend going back to either STAGE ONE: Getting to the main journal article or STAGE TWO: Choosing your route.

In this article, we help you set clear, precise, and accurate research questions and/or hypotheses, which is essential for any quantitative dissertation. After all, a common criticism, which leads dissertations to be marked down, is that students fail to answer the research questions/hypotheses that they set. Sometimes this is a failure of the dissertation process, but often it is simply the fact that the research questions/hypotheses do not accurately explain what your study is trying to achieve. As a result, the person marking your work does not see the necessary consistency between (a) your research questions/hypotheses and (b) your findings.

We help you to set appropriate research questions/hypotheses for your dissertation by guiding you through the following four steps: (1) deciding whether you need to include research questions and hypotheses, or just one or the other; (2) learning how the route that you adopted affects the setting of research questions/hypotheses; (3) learning how your goals determine the type of research questions/hypotheses you will set; and (4) adopting, modifying or creating appropriate research questions/hypotheses for your dissertation.