Module 4 - Research

Overview | Big Picture | RQS | Design | R&E | Proposal Steps | Resources

RQS

Identifying a Researchable Question

The previous section (Big Picture) provided four questions to consider for the research you will be proposing to conduct. This tab will help you to think about the specific research questions you plan to ask. As with most aspects of writing the proposal, identifying your research questions is iterative and includes considerations such as:

• The stage of your intervention. (Are you at initial stages of development, or have you implemented a few times and don’t expect to make multiple revisions?)
• What does the literature say about the challenge you are addressing in your project? It is critical to build your research on previous literature or in response to gaps in the literature, because your research should contribute Intellectual Merit to the field.
• Whether your research question is (a) critical to the field (Intellectual Merit); (b) of use to stakeholders; and (c) interesting to you.
• Your Theory of Change and Logic Model: Do you have evidence of your hypothesized theory of change or is it still very theoretical? What research question(s) do you have about the outcomes in your Logic Model?

The previous tab also provided information about identifying the stage of your intervention, and the previous module (Project Description) provided guidance on building your proposal from a strong theoretical or literature base. This tab will focus on how a Logic Model can help to identify appropriate research questions.

In Module 1: Introduction we talked about how theories of change and logic models are related to each other:

RQS

"A theory of change is a higher-level model that describes why you think your intervention will have a particular impact on the target population. Theories of change should be informed by the literature. A logic model spells out more specifically how these mechanisms will work in your project”—Module 1

One way to develop research questions is to consider your theory of change (which grows out of the literature). What do you think will change as a result of your project, and how will that change happen?

Examples

• Young people who participate in this ITEST project will have greater skills in coding, which will increase their interest in STEM careers.
• Teachers who receive ITEST PD will increase their ability to use innovative technology in the classroom, which will increase student interest and academic outcomes.

Your research question(s) should address some aspect of your theory of change. If you cannot measure the long-term outcome (e.g., youth choosing a STEM career), what shorter term outcome will you be able to measure during the life of the project? This will become your research question.

Another, related way to identify your research question is to look at the outcomes in your logic model and design questions around them. You have now gone through two rounds of review of your logical model; in the Proposal Steps tab of this module you will review it again and use it to develop your research questions.

Remember: ITEST projects are research and development projects the two should be integrated, and each is essential to the other.

Activity 4.02a

Review your logic model and answer the following questions. What is your theory of change and how does it incorporate the ITEST Pillars? What do you hypothesize will change as a result of your intervention? In other words, using the logic model language, how will the ‘inputs’ lead to the ‘outputs’ which will then lead to the ‘outcomes’? You may have already addressed these in Activity 3.03 (Rationale).

Activity 4.02b

What outputs will you be able to measure? (If your outputs can’t be measured, how can you revise them?)

Activity 4.02c

You may want to identify short, medium and long-term outcomes in order to identify outcomes within the life of your project while still including longer-term hypothesized outcomes.

Answering these questions will contribute to your research design’s coherence. The proposal rationale, the logic model, the research design, the project activities and the evaluation plan will coherently contribute to a research and development project that will answer questions that have Intellectual Merit and contribute to the field. You may want to revisit the Logic Model Template (discussed in Module 1: Introduction). In particular, pay attention to the theory of change and output/outcome table located on page 2 of the template (see excerpt below).

Activity 4.02d