Research Methods · Simplified
Research Question to Method Mapper
Before any test is chosen, a question has to be read. What is it actually asking for?
Question 1
What is this question asking for?
Two readings, one after the other: what kind of answer the question wants, then what kind of study could produce it. Nothing here is scored, and more than one option can be defensible.
What the readings did
The wording does not always settle it
Two of these questions pointed clearly at one kind of answer. The third did not, and no amount of reading it more carefully would have helped.
Key idea: A research question is a claim about what would count as an answer. Read it for that first, and the kind of study follows. Where the wording leaves the kind of answer open, as in why do some students disengage from group work, the choice is not a reading problem to be solved but a commitment the researcher has to make and state. Choosing a test before making that commitment is choosing an answer before knowing the question.
The standings here are one experienced reading of wording invented for teaching, not an answer key. Options marked defensible are genuinely defensible and the note says what each would commit you to. A well-argued alternative from a supervisor is worth more than any of them. No test is named anywhere in this activity, deliberately: the reasoning that stops before the test is the part students most often skip.
The longer version adds six questions, a design decision, a fourth part on what you would still need to know before analysing, and a select-all challenge. It is at Research Question to Method Mapper in the main collection.