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Welcome to Topic 3: Enquiry Questions Part 2.
In Enquiry Questions Part 1,
we started to get you thinking about developing new topic into a provisional
enquiry question.
We encouraged you to start thinking about the context,
that is, where the question is set and audience, who is it aimed at.
Today, we will further develop this by looking at the scope of
the question and how to modify the audience, and context, by changing a few
words here and there,
according to what you are finding or not finding in the literature.
Now let's think about the scope that a question
permits. General versus specific questions.
Is it very general or broad,
such as, how do parents feel about infant immunisation?
This question is broad because there are many different answers to it,
depending on the views of the person answering it. A much more specific version
this question might be, "What proportion of New Zealand parents immunise their
children?"
The answer to this question will be quite brief,
a single percentage, too brief in fact for this to be a strong enquiry question.
Finding the right balance between broad and specific
will depend heavily on your chosen topic. Open versus closed questions.
Is it an open question permitting more than one potential line of enquiry,
or answer, or is it a closed question
that could be answered with a simple yes or no. The question,
"Are you hungry?", is generally easily answered with a yes / no
answer, so we consider it a closed question.A question that permits more detailed
answers
beyond a simple yes or no is considered an open question.
An example if this might be, "What do you feel like eating?"
This question could be answered in many different ways
and offers a much wider scope for discussion and explanation.
Balanced versus unbalanced questions.
We also recommend that students try to construct a
balanced question, which is one that allows all sides of the issue at hand
to be considered. A balanced question lays a strong foundation
for finding and presenting a balanced answer. An unbalanced question generally
only presents one side of the issue
and runs the risk yielding a biased answer. By
this we mean that only one outlook may be represented
without considering the potential worth of other viewpoints.
An example of an unbalanced
question may be, "Why do homeless people refuse to look for employment?".
This question is unbalanced and rather unfair
as it assumes that all homeless people refuse to look for work.
It does not take into account that many homeless people may either be looking
for work,
or want to look for work but do not know where to start. Be careful about
making
unsupported assumptions about people based on your own opinions,
when you construct your question. A more balanced approach to the homeless people
employment topic
may be, "How do homeless people perceive
unemployment?". This question is exploratory
and seeks to understand the perceptions of homeless people with respect to
unemployment.
It does not assume anything about this group of people at the outset.
The answers may be that they perceive it this way,
or that way, or another way. It provides a broad scope to explore the issue
in-depth from the perspective of the target group identified in the question.
Emotionally neutral
versus emotionally weighted questions. Emotionally-charged questions can be
very difficult to answer.
Consider this question, "Should euthanasia be legal in New Zealand?".
This question is very difficult to answer
as this topic is highly controversial with individual opinions being
influenced by people,
and emotional world views, religious beliefs and so on.
Finding a factual answer would therefore be very tricky
and the word 'should' is problematic. What determines whether it should be legal or
not:
health considerations, religion, personal freedom to choose?
A more emotionally neutral approach to this topic
might be, "How do palliative care nurses view the concept of
euthanasia? This version of the question
is, like the homeless people, example more exploratory.
Now that we've spent some time thinking about the scope of a question
let's discuss some other ways we can construct a strong enquiry question, for
KEC, specifically.
One useful strategy is to consider modifiers.
These are words that we can include in the question to adjust its context,
audience, and purpose.
Modify the context. Consider this question,
"Do sports supplements give athletes a performance advantage in competition?".
First, let's modify the circumstances. "Do sport supplements give
athletes a performance advantage in elite competition?".
Here we have adjusted the type of competition that the athletes are
participating in.
This makes the question more specific, too, since we and now considering
only a small subset of the original topic, elite competition,
rather than all competition.
Now we'll modify the participants, "Do sport supplements give
basketball players a performance advantage in competition?".
The question is now specifically targeted at basketball players.
This also narrows the scope considerably
using modifiers like this can be very useful if you are finding that your
broad question
is resulting in an unmanageable amount of literature.
Now that we're only focusing on basketball players we've removed
all references to other sports when we come to searching for information.
You can also modify the circumstances,
participants, and what is being assessed all at the same time.
You might end up with something very specific like this:
"Do protein-rich supplements give basketball players a
performance advantage in elite competition?".
This may be a perfectly sound question returning a nice,
manageable stack of resources but by narrowing the scope so much
you might also find that there is now not enough information available.
If you find the scope to be too narrow, and that the information to answer your
question is scarce,
try the reverse strategy. Modify towards
a broader scope. For example,
you could expand a question from, "How does co-sleeping affect
infants?" to "How does co-sleeping
affect young children. Keep playing with the words and adjusting the scope
as you continue to search for information. Question construction really
is a dynamic process and your question will change
as you find new literature.
Modify the audience. You could also consider
adjusting the question's audience. Who will be interested in the answer?
Let's modify the audience for the question, "Are Hector's dolphin populations
stable?".
At present this question encompasses all populations of Hector's dolphin found
throughout New Zealand waters, and might be of interest to the government,
and its marine policy makers to national conservation groups
and other nationwide stakeholders. However there are several different
populations of these dolphins in different parts of New Zealand.
If we were finding too much literature to manage for the original question,
and needed to narrow it down, we could focus on one
region, and ask, "Are Hector's dolphin populations stable
in the Banks Peninsula Marine Protected Area?".
This might now be of particular interest to local stakeholders
such as the Department of Conservation, eco-tourism,
operators and fishermen in the region.
Modify the purpose. You can also modify the purpose of your question.
This changes the focus, what exactly
it intends to examine. Consider the question,
"Should severe stroke victims be resuscitated?"
This is a very emotionally-weighted question.
As in the previous example we also run into problems with the word 'should'.
It would be very difficult to find research to answer this question
definitively
because so many factors can affect a decision like this.
Would it be possible to design a study to test this question?
No, but we can adjust the questions focus
to find related information that is more concrete
and less emotionally weighted. For example
if we want to know the likely medical outcomes of the procedure
we could instead ask, "What is the quality of life
for severe stroke victims who are resuscitated?" -
or "What physical factors affect whether severe stroke victims can be
resuscitated?".
Answers to these questions would likely be factored into a decision
whether to resuscitate a patient or not, but they will not be able to completely
answer the original question. In summary,
a well-structured inquiry question is aimed at an intended
audience for specific reason. The context
suggests that something interesting and relevant is being asked.
This is probably enough to keep you going for now. In the next lecture module,
we will start to look further the types of questions that can be asked.
Go well this week.