Once you have a number of responses, review them. Do you notice patterns of interest, puzzles or questions? Do you feel strongly enough about any of these ideas to do further work with them?
Research is about asking questions, either of ourselves and/or of others, in order to understand better what's happening around us, and to understand our effects on other people.
- Mary Hamilton (1989, p. 5)
Once you've identified a focus for research, take some time to reflect about whether the research is do-able and worth doing. Talk with students and others about your interests. Their responses may offer insights and help you clarify a research focus.
The following questions might help (Holly, Arhar, & Kasten, 2005):
However you arrive at your focus, consider how your location and biases influence your choice, and consider how your research will benefit others. Selecting a topic is an ethical choice (see Chapter 5).
Developing a question may help to focus your project. Although some researchers believe that questions should be clarified before beginning to collect information, others see value in starting with a general question or questions. Either approach may work for you, depending on what you are researching.
Write out your question. Don't worry about the structure, just write it down. Write and rewrite as much as you need to. Once you've completed a draft question, reread it to see if it still interests you. If not, review your reflective writing and other notes to see what first caught your imagination about the research topic. Work this into your question.
In the following example, Veronica Park (2000) describes her focus and the questions she developed. She also describes the process she engaged in before deciding on a question.