Writing Program at New College

Revising the Research Question

Once you receive feedback from your classmates, teacher, and others, you will be in a place where you can revise your research question. Remember that the final decision is yours. You will have to decide which advice for revision is useful and to the point and which is not. To assist you in this process, we offer the following questions:

• Is there agreement among your readers that your research question is too broad?
• Have you been given advice for narrowing your research question, or can you think of a good way to focus the question?
• Is there a consensus among readers that your research question is too narrow? What ideas do you have for making it more general?
• Have you received feedback that suggests you have some misunderstanding of the issue at hand?
• Have your readers provided you with specifics about what it is you misunderstand?
• Did you receive comments about the clarity of your question? Were your readers specific about how to clarify your phrasing of the question?

After reviewing your initial research question, all of the responses initiated by this question, as well as your answers to the above questions, you are ready to move to a formal draft of your Research Question.

You can access the full assignment description here.