A research question is "a clear, focused, concise, complex and arguable question around which you center your research. You should ask a question about an issue that you are genuinely curious about." The Writing Center, GMU.
You need to do this no matter what type of review you are undertaking, and it's often not as easy as it seems!
Follow these steps to try to nail down your research question:
For more information, see Center for Innovation in Research and Teaching (CIRT), Writing a Good Research Question, or watch the instructional video below from the Laurier University Library in Canada.
Search frameworks use mnemonics to help you focus your research question further. They will also guide you in developing search concepts and terms.
PICO is a search framework commonly used in the health sciences to focus clinical questions. An example might be, “Does cranberry juice help reduce urinary tract infections in people living in aged care facilities?” The PICO framework would look like this:
Population/Patient/Problem |
People living in aged care facilities |
Intervention |
Cranberry juice |
Comparison |
No cranberry juice (status quo) |
Outcome |
Prevention of UTIs |
You could also adapt this framework to PICOT (which adds Time) or PICOS (which adds Study design), or PICOC (adding Context).
Other frameworks may be helpful, depending on your question and your field of interest:
For qualitative questions you could use
For questions about causes or risk,
For evaluations of interventions or policies,
See the University of Notre Dame Australia’s examples of some of these frameworks.
TIP: If you use all the elements of your search framework to combine terms, you may find you have narrowed the search too much and will struggle to find relevant studies. Try using only the most critical elements from the mnemonic. For example, in a PICO search, you would often exclude the O (outcome) terms in your search strategy. If the C (comparison) is the status quo, you wouldn't use those terms either. |