Research questions and rivers

In the recent flooding, more than one river burst its banks so thoroughly that it lost any sense of having banks, and certainly no traces of the banks are visible to an observer. At this point, it is more a mass of water than anything identifiable as a river.

I can play for hours in water and I enjoy getting to understand the currents, the feel, the properties of that untrammelled water. But eventually, for the sake of the countryside, and in particular for the sake of making sure the water gets from A to B, we need that river back. In places, the water will find its own new channels through which to flow. In places, I will need to rebuild, channel and trammel the water into a river that flows where I want it to flow.

As with water, so with research questions. There’s a time for flooding – after all, the land can be much richer and productive after a good flood. As academics, we need space to let our brains overflow if we are going to be creative, imaginative researchers. But there’s also a time for safe, well-contained rivers. And crafting a research question is definitely one of those times.

It’s been a hard and frustrating couple of months with the PhD. I’ve felt as if I was getting somewhere, only to discover I was going round in overlapping circles. In the last few days, I think I’ve worked out both the source of the problem and a way to conceptualise the solution.

I have been filling my head with epistemology, ontology, ethics, standpoints, theoretical perspectives, methodologies, approaches, ways of seeing the world, ethical stances for a long time now. For a while, my river held as the water levels rose. Then it burst its banks – not hard as I tend not to build high flood defences. But then I continued adding a deluge of not-terribly-critical-but-highly-creative thinking to the swirling and increasingly murky water. I’ve been paddling around in the flood – sometimes swimming, sometimes half-drowning – for the last few months.

And yesterday I began to realise that this is why I cannot define my all-important research question.  I’d worked out over the last few weeks that the water was getting very murky and that my thinking might be creative but wasn’t very “researcher-like”.  But it was only in the last week, thanks to an amazingly perceptive (and patient) supervisor, that I caught sight of the serious threat posed by the flood and remembered I was supposed to be navigating a river. In practical terms, the realisation came via reflecting on a set of immensely helpful questions from my supervisor that she had sent to help me think through why I was going round in circles.  

The source of the problem, and the germ of the solution is this: If a research question acts as the river banks that determine the edge and course of the river, then it is impossible to craft a research question while still splashing and half-drowning on a flood plain.

So, back to basics. Yesterday, force myself to use a flow chart/table to funnel my thinking from an overarching topic down to a specific question, and from that the questions I will need to be able to ask of my data to answer that specific question. That really helped me work out the direction the river should be flowing. It also showed me that I’d been forgetting my overarching topic in the hunt for a workable research question. Simply looking wider broke through the blockage to focusing my sight more narrowly.

Today, I’ve gone back to a rigorous and focused overview of epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology to remind myself where the river banks could lie. Next challenge is to work out where the banks need to be to get the river flowing in the direction I want – in other words to pick a suitable way of seeing the world and stick to it. In the process, I accept that I may realise I need the river to flow in a slightly different direction because of where I feel the need to put the banks.

Tomorrow, it’s time to double check that my methods suit the data I will need in order to answer the questions that my theoretical perspective allow me to ask. And if I manage that, then I reckon that’s the research question sewn up and I can knock off happily for the Christmas break. The challenge in the new year will be to reduce the volume of water (new ideas, creative stimuli) that fill up the river so it doesn’t go into flood again.