Some steps to narrow down
research ideas
Narrowing your research focus
• What is the general context of the study?
– Evaluation? Comparison? Survey?
– What is the broad research question?
– What further questions can be asked?
– What questions are worth to be answered?
• what knowledge is valuable? and for whom?
• Write down many of your potential questions
in terms of examples or lay summaries!
Narrowing your research focus
• Write down many of your potential questions in terms of
examples or lay summaries!
– Example 1: Helping Joe and Mary understand what causes stress
when doing homework with their ADHD son will improve....
– Example 2: On days where Tim feels insecure, he has more
difficulties to get intimate with Anna than usually
– Example 3: Each time Olga feels that other people are critical
toward her, she…
• also feels uneasy about her appearance
• finds herself eating more than usual
Disentangling ideas…
1.
2.
3.
4.
Identify comparisons
Identify correlations or associations
Identify independent and dependent variables
Identify concepts and their measured equivalents
Disentangling ideas…
• On days where Tim feels insecure,
• within subject: compare differences in insecurity across
days
– he has more difficulties
• still within subject: more difficulties on those days than on
other days
• what is difficulty? lower likelihood?
– to get intimate with Anna than usually
• what is getting intimate?
– Tim’s experience? Anna’s experience? Which variables?
Concepts
• All concepts need to be reflected by data in the
empirical study
• and yes, they need to be directly reflected!
– i.e.: no inferences!
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•
•
•
do we talk about dimensions?
do we talk about events?
do we talk about inventories?
what are the sources of our data?
– do we need to adjust our language when it comes to
hypotheses?