Some important factors to consider when choosing a research question:

• When we talk about the research question, we mean the relationship between certain defined variables. For example: Is depression related to college GPA? This question examines depression, grades, and the relationship between the two. Therefore, when we talk about a question, this includes selecting a set of variables (different instructors require different number of variables in their classes) and thinking of how they may be related.
• At the point where you are deciding on a question, you do not determine the direction of the relationship between your variables. You do not ask "Does depression result in lower GPA for college students?" You may eventually phrase your question that way, but only after a review of the literature suggests it is appropriate to do so.
• Initially it helps to think about a few questions, not just one. You will later be able to narrow down your choice. If you only come up with one question, you may be stuck with a difficult to research topic that will make the process more painful than necessary.
• Of course, you need to choose a question relevant to the capstone section you are enrolled in. Do not choose a social psychology question in the clinical capstone, for example.
• Choose to conduct a study on a question of interest to you. The process will be difficult enough. Do not make it even more difficult by selecting a question that you have absolutely no interest in finding the answer to. If you choose something interesting to you, the difficulty of the process will be overshadowed by the excitement of what you are doing.
• If you have some background knowledge in an area of interest to you, use that to your advantage. For example, if you wrote a paper on depression for another course, and depression is interesting to you, consider using that as a topic for your capstone. The advantage of this is that you've already searched the literature, done some reading, etc. It will be easier and faster to narrow down your question within a topic you are already familiar.
• 'Familiar with' does not mean 'personally relevant.' Although we do not outright discourage you from doing research in an area of relevance to you (for personal or familiar reasons, for example), we do encourage you to beware. Many times students come with a hypothesis along with the question, and feel a certain degree of expertise based on personal experience. This is not the scientific way to approach knowledge. You cannot form a hypothesis until you've researched the literature on the topic. Starting off thinking they know the answer sometimes delays or prevents students from coming up with good questions, hypothesis, and designs because the objectivity is lost.
• Once you've come up with some interesting questions, go to the literature and type in your keywords. It happens that students find very few literature sources for their favorite question, but many for their second choice. Consider, in these circumstances, choosing the question that is less interesting but more researched, since it will facilitate writing the introduction.
• Also select based on the literature available to you online or locally. If your area of interest is not researched on this campus, we may not have the journals where the articles can be found. Check library holdings for the major journals where your research area is published to make sure they are available. Much time is lost waiting for articles to arrive over intercampus loan.