Crafting Quality Research Questions
The research paper is a common assignment in many courses at SBTS. A good research paper will give you an opportunity to dive deeper into a particular topic, often one that you’ve selected based on your personal interests. In addition, the practice of research, crafting a thesis, supporting it with quality argumentation and resources, and presenting it in a coherent and sustained paper will equip you to think carefully about many topics in your future ministry. Research papers are an essential part of your seminary education. However, many students end up turning in papers that are too broad. Instead of presenting a focused argument on a specific topic, they end up merely reporting or rehashing what they read in their sources. The key to avoiding this trap begins with crafting a quality research question.
A Quality Research Question Leads to a Thesis
At its simplest, a research question is a question your thesis answers. So, for example, if your thesis for a New Testament theology paper ends up being something like, “Penal substitution is the dominant motif of the atonement expressed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians,” then your research question would have been “What is the dominant motif of the atonement expressed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians?” Perhaps that seems a little too simple, but here is the key: students often begin their research with a thesis already in mind, and that thesis is often very broad. Instead, begin with a research question. That will allow you to engage with the evidence and then craft a better thesis that answers your research question.
A Quality Research Question is Arguable and Answerable
Your research question must be both arguable and answerable. It must be arguable in that you should be able to make an argument either for or against the answer to the question. If your question doesn’t lead to an arguable thesis, you’ll just end up with a descriptive paper. These can be informative but aren’t helpful in advancing an argument. The research question must be answerable in that it has to have an answer that can be found by digging into sources. Answerability can vary depending on the field of research, the availability of sources, and more.
A Quality Research Question is Narrow
Second, your research question must be narrow. Research questions often start out too broad. You might have started with, “what does the New Testament teach about the atonement?” While that question is, in theory, both arguable and answerable, you won’t be giving a quality answer to that question in a project the length of a research paper. Your question should be tailored narrowly enough that it gives you a well-defined field of sources (primary and secondary) to examine. So, in the narrower example above, you can now focus your research on atonement motifs in a single letter and the secondary literature on that letter. That is a much more manageable field than the entire New Testament and all New Testament secondary literature! You could narrow it even further by examining a specific chapter or passage (and, in many cases, this is what you should do).
Crafting research questions and quality theses that answer them is both an art and a science, and the best way to learn how to do it well is by writing research papers. Two books that provide handy, concise guides to the process are Michael Kibbe’s From Topic to Thesis and William Badke’s Research Strategies: Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog.
