I’m working on a law multi-part question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.
1) As of now, what is your topic – or, what is the social issue / problem you are studying?
2) How does your topic relate to law and society?
3) What is your research question? “How” questions tend to be useful in this regard. Chances are you’ll start off with a question that is too broad; try to zoom in. Then, after that, it probably won’t hurt to zoom in once more.
4) What are your parameters? In other words, who specifically will you interview? Make sure you are being specific enough here. Keep in mind, in this case diversity isn’t necessarily better. For example, rather than trying to interview lots of different “types of people,” for this project you’ll be better off talking to only people of one “type” (e.g., New York City women who work in public hospitals). If your research question steers you toward “diversity” rather than “specificity,” go back and revise it.
5) What in particular do you expect to learn from your data? What are your interviewees likely to say, etc.? Don’t be lazy about this answer. Think hard. You want to the data you collect to ‘behave’ in ways that are beneficial to the argument you’ll go on to make in your paper. Thus, the more careful you are in selecting the data to collect, the easier it will be to write up your results later.
6) Does your answer to #5 sufficiently answer the research question from #3? If not, go back and see if you can rework your research question or alter the type of data you’ll collect.
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