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Course 23 · Lesson 1.2

From topic to question: writing a research question that can be answered

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Lessons in this course

Course 23 outline

Module 1: How Research Works

  1. What research is and what a scholarly paper is for
  2. From topic to question: writing a research question that can be answered
  3. The working thesis and how it changes as research develops
  4. Taking notes, recording sources and organizing a project
  5. Academic integrity: quotation, paraphrase and plagiarism

Module 2: Primary and Secondary Sources

  1. Primary and secondary sources in theology and church history
  2. Source criticism: author, date, audience, purpose and transmission
  3. Translations, editions and the problem of reading ancient texts in English
  4. Judging the reliability of a source, including websites and popular books

Module 3: Finding and Reading Scholarship

  1. How peer review works and what it does not guarantee
  2. Finding articles, books and reference works with free and library tools
  3. Reading a scholarly work efficiently and critically
  4. Writing a literature review: summarizing a debate

Module 4: Citation

  1. Chicago notes and bibliography: books, articles and chapters
  2. Citing the Fathers, councils, creeds and online sources
  3. Biblical citation conventions: books, abbreviations, versions and numbering
  4. Managing a bibliography and checking citations

Module 5: Evaluating Arguments and Bias

  1. The anatomy of an argument: claim, evidence, assumption and conclusion
  2. Common fallacies and weak arguments in theological writing
  3. Identifying bias in sources: confessional, ideological and commercial
  4. Confirmation bias in your own work, and ways to reduce it

Module 6: Constructing Arguments and Writing

  1. Building a theological argument from Scripture, tradition and reason
  2. Outlining and drafting a research paper
  3. Clear analytical prose: paragraphs, transitions and plain language
  4. Revising, editing and checking quotations and facts

All courses

Program / Course 23: Research Methodology / Lesson 1.2

What you will learn

  • Explain the difference between a topic and a research question.
  • Narrow a broad topic by period, place, person, text or problem.
  • Test a draft question for being answerable, limited, open and worth asking.
  • Recognize the common kinds of question in theology and church history.

The big idea

A topic is an area of interest, such as the Trinity or monasticism. A research question is a specific problem inside that area which evidence can help to answer, such as how Athanasius used the word homoousios between 350 and 373. Moving from topic to question is the hardest early step and the most important one. A good question is narrow enough to answer in the space you have, open enough that the answer is not already fixed, and clear enough that you can tell when you have answered it.

Key terms

Topic
A general area of interest, too broad to be answered directly. Examples: baptism, the Reformation, icons.
Research question
A specific question about a topic that can be answered with evidence, and that guides the whole project.
Scope
The limits of a project: which period, place, texts and aspects it will cover and which it will leave out.
Narrowing
Making a topic smaller and more exact by adding limits of time, place, person, text or problem.
Open question
A question whose answer is not already settled by definition or by the way it is worded.
Loaded question
A question that builds its answer into its wording, such as asking why a group was wrong before you have shown that it was.
Sub-question
A smaller question that must be answered on the way to answering the main one.

Background

Most students begin with a topic and feel ready. The trouble shows when they start to read. A topic like ‘the Eucharist’ fills libraries. No paper can cover it, and a student who tries ends with a vague survey of familiar points. The remedy is a question. A question forces choices about what to include, tells you which sources to read first and which to skip, and gives the paper a direction.

In theology and church history a question usually falls into one of a few kinds. A historical question asks what happened or who said what, and when. A textual question asks about the wording or transmission of a source. An interpretive question asks what a passage or author meant. A comparative question sets two writers or traditions side by side. A reception question asks how a text or idea was understood by later readers. Many good projects combine two of these, but knowing which kind you are asking helps you choose your evidence.

A question also has to be honest. If it can only be answered one way, it is not a question but a thesis in disguise. If the evidence cannot answer it, such as ‘What did Peter think privately about Paul?’, then the project cannot succeed. And if nobody could care about the answer, including you, the writing will be dull. The working method is to start wide, narrow in stages, test the question against the sources that exist, and be ready to revise it as you learn.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Begin with real curiosity

Write down what puzzled or interested you in your reading. A puzzle is better than a subject: ‘Why did the church in the fourth century argue so hard over one Greek word?’ is a puzzle. ‘The Council of Nicaea’ is a subject.

Do a little preliminary reading in reference works and general surveys. Their purpose here is not to give you the answer but to show you the shape of the topic, the main names and the main disagreements.

Step 2: Narrow the topic in stages

Add limits one at a time. Limit by period (the second century), by place (North Africa), by person (Tertullian), by text (the treatise On Baptism), or by problem (the question of whether baptism can be repeated).

Each limit makes the topic smaller. ‘Baptism’ becomes ‘baptism in the early church’, then ‘baptism in North Africa around 200’, then ‘Tertullian’s arguments against baptizing small children in On Baptism’. The last version can be researched in a paper. The first could not be researched in a lifetime.

Step 3: Turn the narrowed topic into a question

Use a question word. ‘How’, ‘why’, ‘to what extent’ and ‘in what ways’ open real problems. ‘Is’ and ‘does’ questions also work, if the answer is not obvious. A statement such as ‘Tertullian and baptism’ is only a label.

Compare: ‘What reasons does Tertullian give for delaying baptism, and how do they relate to his view of sin?’ This can be answered by reading a defined text and comparing it with related writings.

Step 4: Test the question

Ask four things. Is it answerable: do sources exist that bear on it? Is it limited: can it be answered in the length you have? Is it open: could the evidence turn out to say something other than what you expect? Is it worth asking: does the answer matter to anyone beyond yourself?

Check the wording for hidden answers. ‘Why did the medieval church corrupt the gospel?’ assumes corruption. ‘How did medieval writers on penance understand forgiveness, and how did their views differ from earlier ones?’ leaves the judgment to the evidence.

Step 5: Break it into sub-questions and check the sources

List the smaller questions that must be answered first. Then do a short search to confirm that primary sources and some scholarship exist. If there is almost nothing, widen the question. If there is too much, narrow it again.

Treat the question as a working version. It will often change once you read more, and that is a sign of learning, not failure. Lesson 1.3 deals with the matching change in your working answer.

  1. Can I state my question in one sentence that ends in a question mark?
  2. Do sources exist that could actually answer it?
  3. Could the answer be different from what I expect?
  4. Does the wording assume something I have not yet shown?
  5. Can I answer this in the number of pages I have?
  6. Who besides me would find the answer useful?

Examples

Too broad

‘What did the early church teach about the Trinity?’ This covers several centuries, many authors and many languages. A short paper could only skim the surface.

Too narrow or unanswerable

‘What was Athanasius thinking on the morning of his first exile?’ No source can answer this. A question needs evidence in reach.

Loaded

‘Why was the Reformation a mistake?’ or ‘Why was the Council of Trent right?’ Each carries its verdict in the wording. A researcher from either side could replace them with a question about what the participants argued and how they used their sources.

Workable

‘In his Letters to Serapion, how does Athanasius argue that the Holy Spirit is divine, and which Scripture passages does he rely on?’ It names a text and an author, asks for a description, and can be answered from the sources and checked against scholarship.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic scholars often ask questions about the development of doctrine, a topic John Henry Newman treated in the nineteenth century. Such questions can be researched historically, asking how an idea appears in sources over time, while the Church holds that its teaching authority judges what is faithful to the apostolic faith. A researcher may work on both levels without confusing them.

Orthodox

Orthodox scholars often ask how a Father’s thought fits into the wider consensus of the Fathers and the liturgy. The question is historical but is asked within a conviction that the Church’s faith is continuous. Orthodox writers also warn against treating a single Father in isolation or reading him through later categories.

Protestant

Protestants often frame questions around the text of Scripture and how it was read, for example how Luther or Calvin interpreted a passage and why. Because the Reformers appealed to Scripture against some traditions, such questions often involve comparison across periods. A fair question asks what each side argued, not who won.

Academic historians

Historians tend to prefer questions with a defined scope that evidence can settle, and treat questions that cannot be tested as outside the historian’s task. A historian may ask what a council decided but not whether the decision was inspired. Believers may ask both kinds of question, as long as the two are kept distinct in the paper.

Why it matters

A well-made question saves time, shapes every later decision, and protects against the commonest weakness of student papers: a big subject treated vaguely. It also guards against bias, since a question left open invites evidence you did not expect. Time spent here is repaid many times over in the later stages of reading, outlining and writing.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: A big topic shows ambition, and a narrow one looks small.

Correction: Depth impresses more than breadth. A well-researched narrow question shows real skill. A broad one usually leads to generalities that any survey already offers.

Misunderstanding: A research question must lead to a new discovery.

Correction: At the level of this course it does not. The question needs to be answerable and fairly handled. Even well-known results become your own when you work through the evidence yourself.

Misunderstanding: Once I write the question I must keep it unchanged.

Correction: Questions are revised as you read. Finding that the evidence is thin, or that a better question lies nearby, is normal. Record why you changed it.

Misunderstanding: A question that I care about deeply cannot be fair.

Correction: Strong interest is a good source of energy. The safeguard is wording the question so that the answer could go either way, and reading opposing sources with equal care.

Knowledge check

What is the difference between a topic and a research question?

A topic is a general area, such as baptism. A research question is a specific problem within it that evidence can help to answer, such as why Tertullian advised delaying baptism. The topic tells you the area of interest. The question tells you what to look for and when you have finished.

Name four ways to narrow a topic.

Limit by period, place, person, text or problem. For example, narrow ‘prayer’ to prayer in fourth century Egypt, to the writings of Evagrius, to a particular treatise, or to the problem of distraction in prayer. Any four of these are correct.

What is a loaded question, and why is it a problem?

A loaded question builds its answer into its wording, such as asking why a group was wrong before showing that it was. It is a problem because it makes the result fixed in advance and turns research into advocacy. It can be rewritten to ask what the people argued and how their views differed from others.

What four tests should a draft question pass?

It should be answerable with available sources, limited enough for the length of the paper, open in that the evidence could say something unexpected, and worth asking because the answer matters beyond the writer. A question that fails any test should be revised before research goes far.

Think it through

  1. Take a topic you care about and narrow it three times. At what point did it become something a short paper could handle?
  2. Is there a question in your tradition that you find hard to ask neutrally? How might you word it fairly?
  3. What is the difference between ‘What did the council decide?’ and ‘Was the council right?’ Can both be asked in one paper?
  4. Which kind of question, historical, textual, interpretive, comparative or reception, attracts you most?

Independent assignment

From topic to three questions

In your own notebook, write about 300 words. Choose one broad topic from this program. Narrow it in at least three stages and write each stage. Then write three different research questions about the narrowed topic, each of a different kind (for example historical, interpretive and comparative). Test each by the four tests in this lesson and say which you would choose and why. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study