Generating Ideas Assoc. Prof. Dr. Şehnaz Şahinkarakaş

How can we generate our focus of inquiry? Let’s work on an exercise! Step 1: Brainstorming Take out a piece of paper Think for a few minutes about some topics that interest you and jot down these topics in a corner of your paper Select one of the topics and write it in the middle of your paper For 5 minutes, write down the topics and ideas that relate to the main topic; connect and cluster similar ideas When you have finished, see if you have any patterns (e.g. age group, gender, type of person, etc.) Look at your article and tell the focus of inquiry there

Step 2: Developing the Research Question i) Writing your purpose statement: The topic of this study will be ………… This study needs to be conducted because …….. Some verbs to be used for purpose statement: Explore Understand Investigate Identify Evaluate Describe Interrogate

Consider the following to write good purpose statement: How many participants? Where (use pseudonyms) What will you explore? – be specific If exploring experience, then experience of what? Be narrowly focused If exploring perception, then perception of what? Be narrowly focused Avoid jargon use as much as possible

A sample template for a qualitative purpose statement: The purpose of this ______________ (narrative, phenomenological, grounded theory, ethnographic, case, etc.) study is (was? will be?) to ____________ (understand, describe, develop, discover) the _____________ (central phenomenon of the study) for ______________ (the participants) at (the site). At this stage in the research, the ___________ (central phenomenon) will be generally defined as ____________ (a general definition of the central concept). Look at your article and see how the purpose statement is written there. Now write your purpose statement using this template

ii) writing the research question(s) Things to remember while writing research questions: Align them with the research purpose You can converse the purpose statement into a question One point of inquiry in one question Open-ended questions. E.g. What are the experiences of …….? How does a participant describe …….? In what ways does X play a role in Y? Be careful! Close-ended questions are quantitative. E.g. Does X cause Y? Do the participants like X more than Y?

Sample research questions: How do 8th-grade students in Turkey perceive the new assessment system? What is the role of technology in speaking a foreign language? Find the research question in your article (if any) Now write your research question(s) Go through other qualitative articles and find out the research questions. Compare those research questions in the article with those of yours