Formulating a Research Question

for your Extended Essay

General Points to Consider

A well-formulated research question, makes it comparatively easy to determine the kind of information you need to find and how to construct your argument.

A poorly formulated question makes it is difficult (if not impossible) to write a good Extended Essay, because it becomes difficult to figure out how to organize both your search and the direction of your paper

General Points to Consider

Formulate a focused research question, for a specific IB subject.

•The question should not be too broad or too narrow.

•It should fit within the subject area the you have chosen. (Some subject areas do not allow interdisciplinary questions!)

•The question should be answerable.

Think about whether your potential question fits these criteria.

Steps to Consider• Pick a subject you know and have taken a

class in, so that you have a good understanding of its basic concepts, its vocabulary, and it tools of analysis

• Discuss ideas with a teacher in the subject area you are considering

• Do preliminary reading on a topic that excites your interest within that subject and explore various topics, until you find something that truly interests you

• Draft what you think is a precise, answerable, research question that you do not know the answer to.

Steps to Consider• Gather sources right away and start

general reading in the area of interest• Make sure the question you draft "fits"

into an IB subject area appropriately • As you continue your research and

writing, if your questions seems flawed, allow the question to change, or be flexible in choosing another question when necessary

• Follow the data or evidence where it goes; don’t assume you know where the data will lead you

Steps to ConsiderMove from Broad (General) to Specific (Answerable):Topic – English Topic A Comments

Religion in Literature Far too broad.

Religion in 19th Century Literature Still too broad.

Religion in the works of the Brontes Better. Moving in the right direction.

Religion in the works ofCharlotte Bronte

She was a prolific writer.

Charlotte Bronte’s views on Religion in Villette and JaneEyre

Beginning to refine an answerable question.

In what way does CB reveal her attitudes to religion in Villette and Jane Eyre?

This could work.

Types of Questions to ConsiderCompare/contrast two or more things:• You read Oliver Twist and notice a lot of

the action takes place among the poor, and that different characters in the book have a variety of attitudes about people in poverty.

• You re-read the book closely and discover a theme in which the official public policy towards charity is very different from the attitudes and actions of private individuals.

• Your question becomes: How does Charles Dickens portray public charity vs. private charity in Oliver Twist?

Types of Questions to ConsiderAnalyze changes over a period of time:• You read about Brown v Board of Education

and discover, in a newspaper article written in 1956, that several white adults in Kansas publicly expressed that Brown v Board of Education was a good decision, and long over-due.

• You wonder about white attitudes toward integration in Kansas after B v. B of E, if they were already changing before it, or if there were no widespread changes in attitude, at all. So your question becomes: How did B v. B of E affect attitudes of white adults towards school integration in Kansas public schools after1960?

Types of Questions to ConsiderAnalyze elements within a whole:• You read The Red Badge of Courage and

discover that Crane uses a lot of symbolism.

• You are intrigued by the idea of “hidden” meanings in the book and re-read more closely. You discover that many of the symbols he uses are Christian symbols.

• Your question could be: How does Stephen Crane use Christian symbols in The Red Badge of Courage? The title of the essay could be: "Use of Religious Symbolism in The Red Badge of Courage"

Types of Questions to ConsiderAnalyze a cause/effect relationship:• Your history class discussed aspects of the

relationship between slavery and the Civil War

• From a previous class in ancient history, you learned that the Romans were terrified by the possibility of slave uprisings

• You wonder if that same kind of fear was present in the South and what effect, if any, it had on causing the South to secede. You read more about southern attitudes towards their slaves and you create the question: To what extent did fear of a slave uprising contribute to Southern secession in 1861?

Types of Questions to ConsiderAnalyze a relationship between two things, how something affects / changes something:• In a Biology, you discuss colchicine as a

“mitotic poison.” You read more and discover that it was used to create a triticale plant with six sets of chromosomes (hexaploid triticale).

• You wonder if you could create a polyploid version of a common weed like Amaranth by exposing it colchicine, and if so, what would its traits be?

• Your question becomes: What effect does colchicine have on the chromosome number of plants that come from seeds of amaranth that have been soaked in a .05 solution?

How to Formulate a Question

The primary problem with early questions is that they are far too broad – too general for a 14-page essay – and cannot be answered:• What caused World War I and World War

II? (Too broad to explore in depth in a 4,000 word essay)

• Compare and contrast the armies of Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. (You would have to rephrase this as a question and demonstrate the significance of any differences.)

How to Formulate a Question

• To what extent did ancient Babylonians experience inflation? (May be impossible to answer if there is no existing evidence or if evidence is available only in ancient cuneiform, which you don't read, yet.)

• How would history have changed if Adolf Hitler had been assassinated in 1936? (Impossible to answer, because there is no concrete evidence, just speculation.)

• Why were the cruel Spartans more successful at raising their children for warfare than the gentle, democratic Athenians? (Many unwarranted assumptions and value judgments in this question)

Sample Process from Topic to RQ A student begins with the topic of “Urban Food

Deserts in Cleveland” compared to a similar situation in a global city (for a World Studies Paper)

He begins to realize that with the second most highly rated Urban Studies Program in the U.S. at CSU (after Yale) and with the second largest number of urban gardens in the U.S., perhaps Cleveland serves as a kind of anomaly in terms of urban food deserts.

So he will begin here and then look for a city somewhere in the world that experience a similar or very different dynamic in order to hone his question

How to Formulate a Question• What were the most important changes in

American attitudes towards fast food between 1945 to 1955? (Assumes there were changes. You would have to demonstrate that there were and justify why all of this was significant, and to what extent.)

Your major considerations in forming an RQ are:• Is it an appropriately scholarly topic?• Can it be answered?• Can it be adequately answered in 14 pages

(4000 words)?• Is there credible/scholarly information

available?• Am I interested in it?• Does it abide by IB guidelines

References

“Formulating Your Extended Essay Question.” Tulatin High School http://tuhs.ttsdschools.org/pages/Tualatin_High_School/Academics/Library_Media_Center/IB_Extended_Essay_Information/Formulating_Your_Extended_Essay.