Dr. Steve Tippins, who has reviewed over 300 dissertations, says most fail because research questions don't align with problem and purpose statements. He walks through three fixes: use the same key terms across all three, define your population and context clearly, and make sure your questions are answerable and neutral, not leading.
Most qualitative dissertations that don't work are because the research questions don't line up with the problem or the purpose. And when we don't have alignment, everything's going in a different direction and it's hard to write and it's hard for a committee to accept. I'm Dr. Steve Tippins. I've sat on over 300 dissertation committees. We're going to explore the three steps that lead to strong qualitative research questions that lead to alignment with with your problem and purpose statement, as well as completing your dissertation. Why do research questions matter? Research questions, along with the problem and purpose, are the foundation of your study. If you don't set those up properly, the odds on you finishing diminish dramatically. Good research questions determine the data that you'll collect. They also signal to your committee whether your research is in alignment or not. Strong research questions dictate and help you set up your interview questions and how you're going to approach people and what people you need to approach. And as I'm usually saying, getting this right up front saves you lots of time in the future and avoids going backwards to redo parts of your study. So I've talked about alignment. Alignment is a huge term. Aligning your research questions with your problem and your purpose, using the same terms, terms everywhere. Typically, when you're writing a dissertation, you start with reviewing literature, and from that literature we find the gap in the literature, what hasn't been done, and that becomes our problem. The problem is that we do not know. Perceptions of airline pilots about air traffic controllers, for example. Our purpose of this qualitative research study is to determine the perceptions of airline pilots towards air traffic controllers. And it could be a little more sophisticated than that. Now I know my problem. I know my purpose. Now I have research questions. Well, what are the perceptions of airline pilots towards air traffic controllers? All three of those use the same words within the context of the purpose of each statement. Now I'm in alignment. If I've said I want to use perceptions in my problem statement, then I better have perceptions in my purpose and in my research questions. If lived experience is part of my problem, then it should be part of, again, my purpose. And my research questions. That consistency is what puts you in alignment and what gives you strong research questions. We're not using terms like significant because those are quantitative terms. If I have a research question that says perceptions of food handling processes in Northern Illinois factories. Well, perceptions of whom? Worker perceptions. Workers who are new. Higher perceptions of food handling. Now I'm getting More specific with my research question and much more easily, easily able to be aligned with good, strong problem statements and purpose once I'm in alignment. Now I want to move to specificity. Am I specifically saying what I'm looking for? If I say how do employees feel about management, that's not going to be too specific. If I say, how do newly hired employees within the last year, what are their perceptions of management activities related to time off? Well, now I've got parameters on this. I know who I'm going to be interviewing, employees who've been there less than a year and I know I'm going to be asking them about. So I've got a much stronger research question. Too often I've seen people who have research questions but don't answer them. They don't ask questions, interview questions to go along with it. Because if I've asked a research question, I want to answer it. I want to know that I'm going to collect data, data that will allow me to answer it. I also want to know that I'm going to have access to that data. So if I'm going to say, what are the perceptions of six year olds about new school lunches? Well, six year olds, first of all, it's difficult to get permission to interview them. IRBs are very reluctant, researchers are a little reluctant to think about perceptions of six year olds have about school lunches. So you may not be able to answer that question. Well, based on the way it's worded. What you want to do also is to avoid leading questions. Questions like do you like the new vacation policy? Or how much better is our new health care plan than the previous one. You're leading people to answer questions in certain ways. And a great example of questions that are leading, think about those phone calls that you get from political committees saying can you answer three questions? And the, the questions are framed in such a way they're going to get the answer they want. You're not doing research to confirm an agenda. If you are, your committee is going to say, whoa, that's an agenda. We don't confirm agendas, we answer questions. So you want to make sure that you have questions. And one simple thing is ask open ended questions, not what is your perception of A versus B or something like that. A lot allows more nuance. And when you ask yes or no questions, you don't have a lot to talk about. When you get to chapter four to say, well, what did you find? Oh, I found that they agree. And then what? They agree, that's it. I'M done. Well, your committee's not going to let you get there. Try to keep your phrasing as neutral as possible. We don't want to influence results. If I've influenced results, then I got a limitation in my study. So keep things as open as possible. So to go back through this look, I want research questions that align with my problem and my purpose. I want research questions that allow me to collect data to answer those questions. I want research questions that are not leading, that are open ended, allowing people to express their lived experience or their perceptions. I want research questions that are going to give me data that I can analyze, putting through codes and themes, and ultimately results. If you write clear questions, your study is going to be so much easier and faster. And that's what I hope for you. If you're struggling with qualitative research questions, or if you're looking for help with qualitative research questions, join our free Dissertation Help Community. You'll get our five Step Dissertation Acceptance Framework, real support from veteran committee chairs, live calls, and Q and A sessions to start your journey. You don't have to do this alone. Just click the link below to join thousands of dissertation students who've decided to stop being stuck. I'll see you on the inside.
