When is a research question not a research question?

Posing the research question: not so simple.

PURPOSE The success of any research process relies, in part, on how well investigators are able to translate a clinical problem into a research question-a task that is not so simple for novice investigators. The PICOT approach requires that the framing of the research question specify the target Population, the Intervention of interest, the Comparator intervention, key Outcomes, and the Time fr...

Conceiving the Research Question

The research question is the uncertainty about something in the population that the investigator wants to resolve by making measurements on her study subjects. There is no shortage of questions. Even as we succeed in producing good answers to some questions, we remain surrounded by others. Recent clinical trials, for example, have established that the estrogen-like drug tamoxifen reduces the ri...

How to formulate a research question.

This issue of Research Bites looks at some important considerations in formulating a research question for quantitative research. Research originates with an idea about some general problem or question. This problem or question is narrowed down to a more specific research question, which then represents the central issue being addressed. First, it is important to distinguish between descriptive...

the student committee of sports medicine research center: to be independent or not to be? that is the question

To research (or not) that is the question: ethical issues in research when medical care is disrupted by political action: a case study from Eldoret, Kenya.

While considerable attention has been focused on understanding the myriad of ethical analysis in international research in low and middle income countries, new issues always arise that have not been anticipated in guidelines or studied extensively. The disruption of medical care arising as a direct result of political actions, including strikes, postelection violence and related activities, is ...