good research questions psychology

80 fascinating psychology research questions for your next project

Last updated

15 February 2024

Reviewed by

Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L

Psychology research is essential for furthering our understanding of human behavior and improving the diagnosis and treatment of psychological conditions.

When psychologists know more about how different social and cultural factors influence how humans act, think, and feel, they can recommend improvements to practices in areas such as education, sport, healthcare, and law enforcement.

Below, you will find 80 research question examples across 16 branches of psychology. First, though, let’s look at some tips to help you select a suitable research topic.

• How to choose a good psychology research topic

Psychology has many branches that break down further into topics. Choosing a topic for your psychology research paper can be daunting because there are so many to choose from. It’s an important choice, as the topic you select will open up a range of questions to explore.

The tips below can help you find a psychology research topic that suits your skills and interests.

Tip #1: Select a topic that interests you

Passion and interest should fuel every research project. A topic that fascinates you will most likely interest others as well. Think about the questions you and others might have and decide on the issues that matter most. Draw on your own interests, but also keep your research topical and relevant to others.

Don’t limit yourself to a topic that you already know about. Instead, choose one that will make you want to know more and dig deeper. This will keep you motivated and excited about your research.

Tip #2: Choose a topic with a manageable scope

If your topic is too broad, you can get overwhelmed by the amount of information available and have trouble maintaining focus. On the other hand, you may find it difficult to find enough information if you choose a topic that is too narrow.

To determine if the topic is too broad or too narrow, start researching as early as possible. If you find there’s an overwhelming amount of research material, you’ll probably need to narrow the topic down. For example, instead of researching the general population, it might be easier to focus on a specific age group. Ask yourself what area of the general topic interests you most and focus on that.

If your scope is too narrow, try to generalize or focus on a larger related topic. Expand your search criteria or select additional databases for information. Consider if the topic is too new to have much information published on it as well.

Tip #3: Select a topic that will produce useful and relevant insights

Doing some preliminary research will reveal any existing research on the topic. If there is existing research, will you be able to produce new insights? You might need to focus on a different area or see if the existing research has limitations that you can overcome.

Bear in mind that finding new information from which to draw fresh insights may be impossible if your topic has been over-researched.

You’ll also need to consider whether your topic is relevant to current trends and needs. For example, researching psychology topics related to social media use may be highly relevant today.

• 80 psychology research topics and questions

Psychology is a broad subject with many branches and potential areas of study. Here are some of them:

Developmental

Personality

Experimental

Organizational

Educational

Neuropsychology

Controversial topics

Below we offer some suggestions on research topics and questions that can get you started. Keep in mind that these are not all-inclusive but should be personalized to fit the theme of your paper.

Social psychology research topics and questions

Social psychology has roots as far back as the 18th century. In simple terms, it’s the study of how behavior is influenced by the presence and behavior of others. It is the science of finding out who we are, who we think we are, and how our perceptions affect ourselves and others. It looks at personalities, relationships, and group behavior.

Here are some potential research questions and paper titles for this topic:

How does social media use impact perceptions of body image in male adolescents?

2. Is childhood bullying a risk factor for social anxiety in adults?

Is homophobia in individuals caused by genetic or environmental factors?

What is the most important psychological predictor of a person’s willingness to donate to charity?

Does a person’s height impact how other people perceive them? If so, how?

Cognitive psychology research questions

Cognitive psychology is the branch that focuses on the interactions of thinking, emotion, creativity, and problem-solving. It also explores the reasons humans think the way they do.

This topic involves exploring how people think by measuring intelligence, thoughts, and cognition. 

Here are some research question ideas:

6. Is there a link between chronic stress and memory function?

7. Can certain kinds of music trigger memories in people with memory loss?

8. Do remote meetings impact the efficacy of team decision-making?

9. Do word games and puzzles slow cognitive decline in adults over the age of 80?

10. Does watching television impact a child’s reading ability?

Developmental psychology research questions

Developmental psychology is the study of how humans grow and change over their lifespan. It usually focuses on the social, emotional, and physical development of babies and children, though it can apply to people of all ages. Developmental psychology is important for understanding how we learn, mature, and adapt to changes.

Here are some questions that might inspire your research:

11. Does grief accelerate the aging process?

12. How do parent–child attachment patterns influence the development of emotion regulation in teenagers?

13. Does bilingualism affect cognitive decline in adults over the age of 70?

14. How does the transition to adulthood impact decision-making abilities

15. How does early exposure to music impact mental health and well-being in school-aged children?

Personality psychology research questions

Personality psychology studies personalities, how they develop, their structures, and the processes that define them. It looks at intelligence, disposition, moral beliefs, thoughts, and reactions.

The goal of this branch of psychology is to scientifically interpret the way personality patterns manifest into an individual’s behaviors. Here are some example research questions:

16. Nature vs. nurture: Which impacts personality development the most?

17. The role of genetics on personality: Does an adopted child take on their biological parents’ personality traits?

18. How do personality traits influence leadership styles and effectiveness in organizational settings?

19. Is there a relationship between an individual’s personality and mental health?

20. Can a chronic illness affect your personality?

Abnormal psychology research questions

As the name suggests, abnormal psychology is a branch that focuses on abnormal behavior and psychopathology (the scientific study of mental illness or disorders).

Abnormal behavior can be challenging to define. Who decides what is “normal”? As such, psychologists in this area focus on the level of distress that certain behaviors may cause, although this typically involves studying mental health conditions such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and phobias.

Here are some questions to consider:

21. How does technology impact the development of social anxiety disorder?

22. What are the factors behind the rising incidence of eating disorders in adolescents?

23. Are mindfulness-based interventions effective in the treatment of PTSD?

24. Is there a connection between depression and gambling addiction?

25. Can physical trauma cause psychopathy?

Clinical psychology research questions

Clinical psychology deals with assessing and treating mental illness or abnormal or psychiatric behaviors. It differs from abnormal psychology in that it focuses more on treatments and clinical aspects, while abnormal psychology is more behavioral focused.

This is a specialty area that provides care and treatment for complex mental health conditions. This can include treatment, not only for individuals but for couples, families, and other groups. Clinical psychology also supports communities, conducts research, and offers training to promote mental health. This category is very broad, so there are lots of topics to explore.

Below are some example research questions to consider:

26. Do criminals require more specific therapies or interventions?

27. How effective are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in treating mental health disorders?

28. Are there any disadvantages to humanistic therapy?

29. Can group therapy be more beneficial than one-on-one therapy sessions?

30. What are the factors to consider when selecting the right treatment plan for patients with anxiety?

Experimental psychology research questions

Experimental psychology deals with studies that can prove or disprove a hypothesis. Psychologists in this field use scientific methods to collect data on basic psychological processes such as memory, cognition, and learning. They use this data to test the whys and hows of behavior and how outside factors influence its creation.

Areas of interest in this branch relate to perception, memory, emotion, and sensation. The below are example questions that could inspire your own research:

31. Do male or female parents/carers have a more calming influence on children?

32. Will your preference for a genre of music increase the more you listen to it?

33. What are the psychological effects of posting on social media vs. not posting?

34. How is productivity affected by social connection?

35. Is cheating contagious?

Organizational psychology research questions

Organizational psychology studies human behavior in the workplace. It is most frequently used to evaluate an employee, group, or a company’s organizational dynamics. Researchers aim to isolate issues and identify solutions.

This area of study can be beneficial to both employees and employers since the goal is to improve the overall work environment and experience. Researchers apply psychological principles and findings to recommend improvements in performance, communication, job satisfaction, and safety. 

Some potential research questions include the following:

36. How do different leadership styles affect employee morale?

37. Do longer lunch breaks boost employee productivity?

38. Is gender an antecedent to workplace stress?

39. What is the most effective way to promote work–life balance among employees?

40. How do different organizational structures impact the effectiveness of communication, decision-making, and productivity?

Forensic psychology research questions

Some questions to consider exploring in this branch of psychology are:

41. How does incarceration affect mental health?

42. Is childhood trauma a driver for criminal behavior during adulthood?

43. Are people with mental health conditions more likely to be victims of crimes?

44. What are the drivers of false memories, and how do they impact the justice system?

45. Is the media responsible for copycat crimes?

Educational psychology research questions

Educational psychology studies children in an educational setting. It covers topics like teaching methods, aptitude assessment, self-motivation, technology, and parental involvement.

Research in this field of psychology is vital for understanding and optimizing learning processes. It informs educators about cognitive development, learning styles, and effective teaching strategies.

Here are some example research questions:

46. Are different teaching styles more beneficial for children at different times of the day?

47. Can listening to classical music regularly increase a student’s test scores?

48. Is there a connection between sugar consumption and knowledge retention in students?

49. Does sleep duration and quality impact academic performance?

50. Does daily meditation at school influence students’ academic performance and mental health?

Sports psychology research question examples

Sport psychology aims to optimize physical performance and well-being in athletes by using cognitive and behavioral practices and interventions. Some methods include counseling, training, and clinical interventions.

Research in this area is important because it can improve team and individual performance, resilience, motivation, confidence, and overall well-being

Here are some research question ideas for you to consider:

51. How can a famous coach affect a team’s performance?

52. How can athletes control negative emotions in violent or high-contact sports?

53. How does using social media impact an athlete’s performance and well-being?

54. Can psychological interventions help with injury rehabilitation?

55. How can mindfulness practices boost sports performance?

Cultural psychology research question examples

The premise of this branch of psychology is that mind and culture are inseparable. In other words, people are shaped by their cultures, and their cultures are shaped by them. This can be a complex interaction.

Cultural psychology is vital as it explores how cultural context shapes individuals’ thoughts, behaviors, and perceptions. It provides insights into diverse perspectives, promoting cross-cultural understanding and reducing biases.

Here are some ideas that you might consider researching:

56. Are there cultural differences in how people perceive and deal with pain?

57. Are different cultures at increased risk of developing mental health conditions?

58. Are there cultural differences in coping strategies for stress?

59. Do our different cultures shape our personalities?

60. How does multi-generational culture influence family values and structure?

Health psychology research question examples

Health psychology is a crucial field of study. Understanding how psychological factors influence health behaviors, adherence to medical treatments, and overall wellness enables health experts to develop effective interventions and preventive measures, ultimately improving health outcomes.

Health psychology also aids in managing stress, promoting healthy behaviors, and optimizing mental health, fostering a holistic approach to well-being.

Here are five ideas to inspire research in this field:

61. How can health psychology interventions improve lifestyle behaviors to prevent cardiovascular diseases?

62. What role do social norms play in vaping among adolescents?

63. What role do personality traits play in the development and management of chronic pain conditions?

64. How do cultural beliefs and attitudes influence health-seeking behaviors in diverse populations?

65. What are the psychological factors influencing the adherence to preventive health behaviors, such as vaccination and regular screenings?

Neuropsychology research paper question examples

Neuropsychology research explores how a person’s cognition and behavior are related to their brain and nervous system. Researchers aim to advance the diagnosis and treatment of behavioral and cognitive effects of neurological disorders.

Researchers may work with children facing learning or developmental challenges, or with adults with declining cognitive abilities. They may also focus on injuries or illnesses of the brain, such as traumatic brain injuries, to determine the effect on cognitive and behavioral functions.

Neuropsychology informs diagnosis and treatment strategies for conditions such as dementia, traumatic brain injuries, and psychiatric disorders. Understanding the neural basis of behavior enhances our ability to optimize cognitive functioning, rehabilitate people with brain injuries, and improve patient care.

Here are some example research questions to consider:

66. How do neurotransmitter imbalances in specific brain regions contribute to mood disorders such as depression?

67. How can a traumatic brain injury affect memory?

68. What neural processes underlie attention deficits in people with ADHD?

69. Do medications affect the brain differently after a traumatic brain injury?

70. What are the behavioral effects of prolonged brain swelling?

Psychology of religion research question examples

The psychology of religion is a field that studies the interplay between belief systems, spirituality, and mental well-being. It explores the application of the psychological methods and interpretive frameworks of religious traditions and how they relate to both religious and non-religious people.

Psychology of religion research contributes to a holistic understanding of human experiences. It fosters cultural competence and guides therapeutic approaches that respect diverse spiritual beliefs.

Here are some example research questions in this field:

71. What impact does a religious upbringing have on a child’s self-esteem?

72. How do religious beliefs shape decision-making and perceptions of morality?

73. What is the impact of religious indoctrination?

74. Is there correlation between religious and mindfulness practices?

75. How does religious affiliation impact attitudes towards mental health treatment and help-seeking behaviors?

Controversial topics in psychology research question examples

Some psychology topics don’t fit into any of the subcategories above, but they may still be worthwhile topics to consider. These topics are the ones that spark interest, conversation, debate, and disagreement. They are often inspired by current issues and assess the validity of older research.

Consider some of these research question examples:

76. How does the rise in on-screen violence impact behavior in adolescents.

77. Should access to social media platforms be restricted in children under the age of 12 to improve mental health?

78. Are prescription mental health medications over-prescribed in older adults? If so, what are the effects of this?

79. Cognitive biases in AI: what are the implications for decision-making?

80. What are the psychological and ethical implications of using virtual reality in exposure therapy for treating trauma-related conditions?

• Inspiration for your next psychology research project

You can choose from a diverse range of research questions that intersect and overlap across various specialties.

From cognitive psychology to clinical studies, each inquiry contributes to a deeper understanding of the human mind and behavior. Importantly, the relevance of these questions transcends individual disciplines, as many findings offer insights applicable across multiple areas of study.

As health trends evolve and societal needs shift, new topics emerge, fueling continual exploration and discovery. Diving into this ever-changing and expanding area of study enables you to navigate the complexities of the human experience and pave the way for innovative solutions to the challenges of tomorrow.

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Exploring 200+ Psychology Topics to Research: Unlocking the Depths of the Mind

The world of psychology is as vast as the human mind itself. Delving into the intricate workings of the human psyche can be both fascinating. For students, academics, or anyone with a curious mind, choosing the right psychology topics to research is paramount. In this blog, we’ll navigate through the labyrinth of psychology topics, helping you find your way to a captivating and meaningful research endeavor.

How To Select Psychology Topics To Research?

Table of Contents

• Follow Your Interests: Start with what you love. What aspects of human behavior or the mind fascinate you the most? It’s much easier to research something you’re passionate about.
• Consider Relevance: Think about how your chosen topic fits into your academic or career goals. Does it relate to what you’re studying or the job you want? If it does, great!
• Balance the Scope: Don’t pick a topic that’s too broad or too narrow. Find that sweet spot in the middle. You want a topic that’s focused enough to research effectively but not so narrow that there’s no existing information.
• Explore Different Areas: Research the various branches of psychology, like cognitive, social, clinical, developmental, or biological psychology. See which one resonates with you the most.
• Seek Advice: Talk to your professors, mentors, or peers. They can provide guidance and suggestions based on your interests and goals.

200+ Popular Psychology Topics To Research: Category Wise

40+ cognitive psychology topics.

• The role of working memory in problem-solving.
• Cognitive effects of sleep deprivation.
• Neural basis of attention and focus.
• Influence of language on cognitive development.
• Decision-making biases in economic behavior.
• The psychology of learning and memory.
• The impact of stress on cognitive performance.
• Cognitive decline in aging populations.
• Emotion and memory recall.
• False memories and eyewitness testimony.
• Cognitive processes in creativity.
• Cognitive aspects of decision-making in healthcare.
• The psychology of expertise and skill acquisition.
• Cognitive factors in reading comprehension.
• The role of schemas in information processing.
• Cognitive development in infants.
• Cognitive rehabilitation after brain injury.
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and executive functions.
• Neural mechanisms of perception and visual attention.
• The psychology of problem-solving in artificial intelligence.
• Cognitive aspects of mathematical reasoning.
• Neural plasticity and cognitive recovery.
• Cognitive load and its impact on learning.
• Memory consolidation during sleep.
• Attentional disorders and their impact on cognitive functioning.
• The influence of music on cognitive processes.
• Cognitive development in bilingual individuals.
• Cognitive aspects of decision-making in criminal behavior.
• Neural correlates of cognitive control.
• The psychology of cognitive biases in politics.
• Cognitive effects of mindfulness meditation.
• The part working memory plays in academic success.
• Cognitive processes in language acquisition.
• Cognitive factors in problem gambling behavior.
• The psychology of cognitive development in children with autism.
• Cognitive aspects of spatial navigation.
• Memory distortions and the courtroom.
• Neural basis of cognitive dissonance.
• Cognitive aspects of social perception.
• Cognitive rehabilitation in Alzheimer’s disease.

40+ Social Psychology Research Topics

• The impact of social media on self-esteem.
• Groupthink and decision-making.
• Stereotype threat in academic settings.
• Bystander effect in emergencies.
• Cross-cultural perspectives on conformity.
• Online dating and self-presentation.
• The psychology of social influence.
• The role of empathy in prosocial behavior.
• Social identity and intergroup relations.
• Aggression and video game exposure.
• Prejudice and discrimination in modern society.
• The influence of social norms on behavior.
• Attitudes and attitude change.
• Social support and mental health.
• Obedience to authority figures.
• Social comparison and self-concept.
• The psychology of attraction and relationships.
• The bystander intervention model.
• Body image and social media.
• Political polarization and social psychology.
• The psychology of fake news and misinformation.
• Emotional contagion and social interactions.
• Stereotyping in the workplace.
• Consequences of cyberbullying.
• The impact of group dynamics on creativity.
• Gender roles and socialization.
• The role of humor in social interactions.
• Social factors in decision-making and risk-taking.
• Altruism and volunteerism.
• The psychology of leadership and authority.
• Social exclusion and its effects on individuals.
• The relationship between religion and prosocial behavior.
• Social influence in marketing and advertising.
• Online activism and social change.
• The psychology of online communities and forums.
• Attachment styles and adult relationships.
• Social perceptions of beauty and attractiveness.
• Social isolation’s negative consequences on mental health.
• The psychology of public speaking anxiety.
• The role of forgiveness in interpersonal relationships.

40+ Clinical Psychology Research Topics

• Effects of childhood trauma on mental health in adults.
• Efficacy of virtual therapy for treating anxiety disorders.
• Exploring the genetics of schizophrenia.
• Effects of mindfulness meditation on depression.
• Cultural factors in the diagnosis of eating disorders.
• Examining the link between sleep disorders and mood disorders.
• Assessing the effectiveness of group therapy for substance abuse.
• The role of attachment in borderline personality disorder.
• Investigating the stigma surrounding mental illness.
• Treating PTSD in veterans through exposure therapy.
• Neurobiological basis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
• Parent-child relationships and their impact on conduct disorder.
• Gender differences in the prevalence of depression.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder.
• Psychopharmacology and treatment-resistant depression.
• The psychology of self-harm and self-injury.
• Internet addiction and its connection to mental health.
• Assessing the efficacy of art therapy for PTSD.
• Personality disorders and their impact on interpersonal relationships.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in treating borderline personality disorder.
• Factors contributing to the rise in adolescent depression.
• Exploring the link between childhood abuse and dissociative identity disorder.
• Cross-cultural perspectives on the diagnosis of ADHD.
• The role of serotonin in mood disorders.
• Mindfulness-based stress reduction in chronic pain management.
• Impact of family dynamics on eating disorders in adolescents.
• Examining the long-term effects of child neglect on adult mental health.
• Psychosocial factors in the development of schizophrenia.
• Gender dysphoria and psychological well-being.
• The psychology of resilience in cancer patients.
• Attachment styles and their influence on adult relationships.
• Virtual reality exposure therapy for phobias.
• Exploring the effectiveness of equine therapy for trauma survivors.
• Autism spectrum disorders and early intervention.
• Body image dissatisfaction and its link to eating disorders.
• The psychological impact of chronic illness.
• Cognitive rehabilitation in traumatic brain injury.
• Sleep disorders in children and their impact on academic performance.
• The role of social support in recovery from substance abuse.
• Neuropsychological assessment in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.

40+ Developmental Psychology Research Topics

• The impact of parental divorce on child development.
• Adolescents’ self-identity and social media.
• Long-term effects of early childhood attachment on adult relationships.
• Gender identity development in children.
• The influence of birth order on personality development.
• The role of genetics in language development.
• Autism spectrum disorder interventions for toddlers.
• Adolescent peer pressure and substance abuse.
• The impact of bullying on psychological development.
• Sibling rivalry and its long-term effects.
• Parenting styles and their influence on children’s behavior.
• The development of moral reasoning in children.
• Influence of cultural factors on child development.
• Attachment theory and foster care outcomes.
• The impact of technology on cognitive development in children.
• Children’s understanding of death and grief.
• Cognitive development in bilingual children.
• The role of play in early childhood development.
• Attachment disorders and interventions in adopted children.
• The development of emotional intelligence in adolescents.
• The impact of poverty on child development.
• The relationship between nutrition and cognitive development.
• Bullying prevention and intervention programs in schools.
• The role of grandparents in child development.
• Developmental aspects of sibling relationships.
• Child prodigies and their psychological development.
• Gender stereotypes and their influence on children’s aspirations.
• The effects of early education on academic success.
• Cognitive development in children with learning disabilities.
• The impact of divorce on young adults’ romantic relationships.
• Parent-child communication about sex education.
• Adolescents’ body image and its influence on self-esteem.
• Influence of peer relationships on early social development.
• The role of extracurricular activities in adolescent development.
• Long-term outcomes for children in same-sex parent families.
• Cognitive development in children with ADHD.
• The effects of early exposure to screens on cognitive development.
• The role of attachment in adolescent mental health.
• Identity development in multicultural children.

40+ Biological Psychology Research Topics

• The neural basis of addiction and substance abuse.
• The role of genetics in personality traits.
• Effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive function.
• Exploring the gut-brain connection and its impact on mental health.
• Neural mechanisms of stress and its long-term effects.
• The relationship between brain structure and intelligence.
• The impact of exercise on brain health and cognition.
• Neurobiological factors in eating disorders.
• Neural pathways involved in fear and anxiety.
• The influence of hormones on behavior and mood.
• Neuroplasticity and its implications for recovery after brain injuries.
• The biology of memory and amnesia.
• Understanding the neurological basis of schizophrenia.
• The role of neurotransmitters in depression.
• The impact of aging on brain structure and function.
• Neural mechanisms underlying aggression and violence.
• Brain imaging techniques and their applications in research.
• The effects of prenatal exposure to toxins on brain development.
• Neurological aspects of autism spectrum disorders.
• Brain changes associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• The genetics of Alzheimer’s disease.
• Neurobiology of consciousness and altered states of consciousness.
• The role of the amygdala in emotional processing.
• Neural mechanisms of sexual attraction and orientation.
• The impact of nutrition on brain development and function.
• Brain regions involved in decision-making and impulsivity.
• Neurological factors in Tourette’s syndrome.
• The biology of reward and motivation.
• Neural correlates of empathy and social cognition.
• Genetic predisposition to addiction.
• The influence of hormones on maternal behavior.
• The neurological basis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• Adolescent brain development and the effects on behavior.
• The prefrontal cortex’s function in executive tasks.
• Linguistic disorders and language neuroscience.
• Neuroinflammation’s effects on mental health.
• Mechanisms in the brain that affect sensory perception.
• Neurological and genetic influences on bipolar disorder.
• The impact of persistent pain on brain development and function.
• The endocannabinoid system’s function in controlling mood.

Research Methodology for Psychology Topics

Understanding various research methodologies is key to conducting a successful study. Whether you opt for experimental designs, surveys, case studies, or sophisticated data analysis, each method offers unique insights. Choose the methodology that aligns with your research questions and objectives, ensuring a robust and reliable study.

Resources for Psychology Research

In the digital age, a wealth of resources for psychology topics to research is at your fingertips. Utilize academic journals, databases, books, and online courses to enhance your understanding. 

Engage with professional organizations and attend conferences to stay updated with the latest research trends and network with fellow enthusiasts.

Tips for Successful Psychology Topics for Research

• Choose a Fascinating Topic: Select a research topic that genuinely interests you. Your passion and curiosity will drive your motivation and engagement throughout the research process.
• Narrow Your Focus: Refine your research question to ensure it’s specific and manageable. A focused question will lead to more meaningful and in-depth findings.
• Conduct a Thorough Literature Review: Familiarize yourself with existing research in your chosen area. This helps you build on prior knowledge and identify gaps in the literature.
• Hypothesize and Predict: Develop clear hypotheses and predictions for your study. This sets the direction for your research and provides a framework for data collection and analysis.
• Choose the Right Research Method: Select the research method that best suits your research question, whether it’s experiments, surveys, interviews, or case studies.
• Ethical Considerations: Prioritize ethical guidelines in your research, including obtaining informed consent, ensuring confidentiality, and avoiding harm to participants.
• Sample Selection: Carefully choose your sample to make sure it’s representative of the population you’re studying. Consider factors like age, gender, and cultural diversity.
• Data Collection: Collect data systematically and ensure its accuracy and reliability. Use well-established measurement tools when applicable.
• Data Analysis: Employ appropriate statistical techniques to analyze your data. Make use of software like SPSS or R for thorough analysis.
• Interpret Results Objectively: Avoid confirmation bias and interpret your results objectively, even if they don’t align with your initial hypotheses.
• Discuss Limitations: Acknowledge the limitations of your study in your research paper. This demonstrates your awareness of potential weaknesses and strengthens your research’s credibility.
• Contribute to the Field: Highlight the significance of your research and how it contributes to the broader field of psychology. What does it add to existing knowledge?
• Write Clearly and Concisely: Communicate your findings in a clear, concise, and well-structured manner. Use APA or other relevant style guides for formatting.
• Peer Review: Seek feedback from colleagues, mentors, or professors. Peer review can help identify blind spots and improve the quality of your work.
• Stay Organized: Maintain detailed records of your research process, including notes, data, and references. Organization is key to successful research.
• Time Management: Plan your research timeline carefully, allocating sufficient time for each stage, from literature review to data collection and analysis.
• Persevere: Research often involves setbacks and challenges. Stay persistent, adapt when necessary, and remain dedicated to your research goals.
• Publish and Share: Consider presenting your research at conferences and seek opportunities for publication in academic journals . Sharing your findings contributes to the advancement of the field.
• Stay Informed: Keep up with the latest research trends and developments in psychology. Attend conferences and join professional organizations to stay connected with the academic community.
• Collaborate: Don’t hesitate to collaborate with other researchers, as teamwork can lead to valuable insights and more significant research outcomes.

Choosing the psychology topics to research is akin to embarking on an adventure into the depths of the human mind. Each topic holds the potential to unravel mysteries, challenge assumptions, and make a meaningful impact on individuals and society. 

As you venture into this realm, remember that your curiosity and dedication are your greatest assets. Embrace the journey, learn from every step, and let your research contribute to the ever-expanding tapestry of psychological knowledge. Happy researching!

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2.2 Generating Good Research Questions

Learning objectives.

• Describe some common sources of research ideas and generate research ideas using those sources.
• Describe some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
• Explain what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can appear mysterious—even magical—with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, psychological research on creativity has shown that it is neither as mysterious nor as magical as it appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993). This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.

Finding Inspiration

Research questions often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behavior or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, memory for touches, depression, bungee jumping, and so on. Before looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come from in the first place. Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.

Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behavior as well as secondhand observations from nonscientific sources such as newspapers, books, and so on. For example, you might notice that you always seem to be in the slowest moving line at the grocery store. Could it be that most people think the same thing? Or you might read in the local newspaper about people donating money and food to a local family whose house has burned down and begin to wonder about who makes such donations and why. Some of the most famous research in psychology has been inspired by informal observations. Stanley Milgram’s famous research on obedience, for example, was inspired in part by journalistic reports of the trials of accused Nazi war criminals—many of whom claimed that they were only obeying orders. This led him to wonder about the extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963).

Practical problems can also inspire research ideas, leading directly to applied research in such domains as law, health, education, and sports. Can human figure drawings help children remember details about being physically or sexually abused? How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy? To what extent do cell phones impair people’s driving ability? How can we teach children to read more efficiently? What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?

Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Recall that science is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other’s work and conduct new studies to build on it. Of course, experienced researchers are familiar with previous research in their area of expertise and probably have a long list of ideas. This suggests that novice researchers can find inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researcher (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also find inspiration by picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. In one typical issue of Psychological Science , for example, you can find articles on the perception of shapes, anti-Semitism, police lineups, the meaning of death, second-language learning, people who seek negative emotional experiences, and many other topics. If you can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.g., memory) or domain (e.g., health care), you can also look through more specific journals, such as Memory & Cognition or Health Psychology .

Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions

Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables. One way to do this is to look closely at the discussion section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past research, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the form of specific research questions, which you can then try to answer with additional research. This can be a good strategy because it is likely that the suggested questions have already been identified as interesting and important by experienced researchers.

But you may also want to generate your own research questions. How can you do this? First, if you have a particular behavior or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are children’s memories of being touched? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.

If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behavior or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a statistical relationship between that behavior or characteristic and some other variable. One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.

• What are some possible causes of the behavior or characteristic?
• What are some possible effects of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?

In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a statistical relationship. If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a statistical relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behavior or psychological characteristic.

If through this process you generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing. But what if you find that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to give up and move on to a new question at this point, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For one thing, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question can almost certainly be refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the research literature. Again, asking yourself a series of more general questions about the statistical relationship is a good strategy.

• Are there other ways to operationally define the variables?
• Are there types of people for whom the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker?
• Are there situations in which the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?

For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among college students in the United States and Mexico. We can still ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—perhaps the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the same result. Or we can ask whether studying elderly people or people from other cultures produces the same result. Again, this approach should help you generate many different research questions about almost any statistical relationship.

Evaluating Research Questions

Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

Interestingness

How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. But what makes a research question interesting in this sense? Here we look at three factors that affect the interestingness of a research question: the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

First, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that have been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting as the subject of new empirical research. But the fact that a question has not been answered by scientific research does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. But how can you assess this before actually collecting data? One approach is to try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense. If you can think of reasons to expect at least two different answers, then the question might be interesting. If you can think of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes.

A second important factor to consider when deciding if a research question is interesting is whether answering it will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has not already been answered by scientific research. But it also means that the question is in some sense a natural one for people who are familiar with the research literature. For example, the question of whether human figure drawings can help children recall touch information would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on the unreliability of eyewitness memory (especially in children) and the ineffectiveness of some alternative interviewing techniques.

A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether human figure drawings help children recall information about being touched has important implications for how children are interviewed in physical and sexual abuse cases. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

Feasibility

A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.

Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured while they carry out various mental tasks, and complex nonexperimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in part by government and private grants. Keep in mind also that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of college students and a paper-and-pencil task.

A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.

Key Takeaways

• Research ideas can come from a variety of sources, including informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.
• Research questions expressed in terms of variables and relationships between variables can be suggested by other researchers or generated by asking a series of more general questions about the behavior or psychological characteristic of interest.
• It is important to evaluate how interesting a research question is before designing a study and collecting data to answer it. Factors that affect interestingness are the extent to which the answer is in doubt, whether it fills a gap in the research literature, and whether it has important practical implications.
• It is also important to evaluate how feasible a research question will be to answer. Factors that affect feasibility include time, money, technical knowledge and skill, and access to special equipment and research participants.
• Practice: Generate five research ideas based on each of the following: informal observations, practical problems, and topics discussed in recent issues of professional journals.
• Practice: Generate five empirical research questions about each of the following behaviors or psychological characteristics: long-distance running, getting tattooed, social anxiety, bullying, and memory for early childhood events.
• Practice: Evaluate each of the research questions you generated in Exercise 2 in terms of its interestingness based on the criteria discussed in this section.
• Practice: Find an issue of a journal that publishes short empirical research reports (e.g., Psychological Science , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review , Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin ). Pick three studies, and rate each one in terms of how feasible it would be for you to replicate it with the resources available to you right now. Use the following rating scale: (1) You could replicate it essentially as reported. (2) You could replicate it with some simplifications. (3) You could not replicate it. Explain each rating.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 , 371–378.

Weisberg, R. W. (1993). Creativity: Beyond the myth of genius . New York, NY: Freeman.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Overview of the Scientific Method

Learning Objectives

• Describe some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
• Explain what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions

Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables. One way to do this is to look closely at the discussion section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past research, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the form of specific research questions, which you can then try to answer with additional research. This can be a good strategy because it is likely that the suggested questions have already been identified as interesting and important by experienced researchers.

But you may also want to generate your own research questions. How can you do this? First, if you have a particular behavior or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are our memories of traumatic events? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will learn when you conduct your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.

If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behavior or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a relationship between that behavior or characteristic and some other variable. One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.

• What are some possible causes of the behavior or characteristic?
• What are some possible effects of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?

In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a relationship. If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behavior or psychological characteristic.

If through this process you generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing. But what if you find that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to give up and move on to a new question at this point, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For one thing, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question can almost certainly be refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the research literature. Again, asking yourself a series of more general questions about the relationship is a good strategy.

• Are there other ways to define and measure the variables?
• Are there types of people for whom the relationship might be stronger or weaker?
• Are there situations in which the relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?

For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among university students in the United States and Mexico. We can still ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—perhaps the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the same result. Or we can ask whether studying elderly people or people from other cultures produces the same result. Again, this approach should help you generate many different research questions about almost any relationship.

Evaluating Research Questions

Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

Interestingness

How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. But what makes a research question interesting in this sense? Here we look at three factors that affect the  interestingness  of a research question: the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

First, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that have been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting as the subject of new empirical research. But the fact that a question has not been answered by scientific research does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. But how can you assess this before actually collecting data? One approach is to try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense. If you can think of reasons to expect at least two different answers, then the question might be interesting. If you can think of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes.

A second important factor to consider when deciding if a research question is interesting is whether answering it will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has not already been answered by scientific research. But it also means that the question is in some sense a natural one for people who are familiar with the research literature. For example, the question of whether taking lecture notes by hand can help improve students’ exam performance would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on note taking and the ineffectiveness of shallow processing on learning.

A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether taking notes by hand improves learning has important implications for education, including classroom policies concerning technology use. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

Feasibility

A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility  of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.

Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured while they carry out various mental tasks, and complex non-experimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in part by government and private grants. Also, keep in mind that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of university students and a paper-and-pencil task.

A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.

How interesting the question is to people generally or the scientific community. Three things need to be considered: Is the answer in doubt, fills a gap in research literature, and has important practical implications.

How likely is the research question going to be successfully answered depending on the amount of time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants there will be.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2019 by Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Carrie Cuttler, & Dana C. Leighton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Research Question Examples 🧑🏻‍🏫

25+ Practical Examples & Ideas To Help You Get Started 

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | October 2023

A well-crafted research question (or set of questions) sets the stage for a robust study and meaningful insights.  But, if you’re new to research, it’s not always clear what exactly constitutes a good research question. In this post, we’ll provide you with clear examples of quality research questions across various disciplines, so that you can approach your research project with confidence!

Research Question Examples

• Psychology research questions
• Business research questions
• Education research questions
• Healthcare research questions
• Computer science research questions

Examples: Psychology

Let’s start by looking at some examples of research questions that you might encounter within the discipline of psychology.

How does sleep quality affect academic performance in university students?

This question is specific to a population (university students) and looks at a direct relationship between sleep and academic performance, both of which are quantifiable and measurable variables.

What factors contribute to the onset of anxiety disorders in adolescents?

The question narrows down the age group and focuses on identifying multiple contributing factors. There are various ways in which it could be approached from a methodological standpoint, including both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Do mindfulness techniques improve emotional well-being?

This is a focused research question aiming to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific intervention.

How does early childhood trauma impact adult relationships?

This research question targets a clear cause-and-effect relationship over a long timescale, making it focused but comprehensive.

Is there a correlation between screen time and depression in teenagers?

This research question focuses on an in-demand current issue and a specific demographic, allowing for a focused investigation. The key variables are clearly stated within the question and can be measured and analysed (i.e., high feasibility).

Examples: Business/Management

Next, let’s look at some examples of well-articulated research questions within the business and management realm.

How do leadership styles impact employee retention?

This is an example of a strong research question because it directly looks at the effect of one variable (leadership styles) on another (employee retention), allowing from a strongly aligned methodological approach.

What role does corporate social responsibility play in consumer choice?

Current and precise, this research question can reveal how social concerns are influencing buying behaviour by way of a qualitative exploration.

Does remote work increase or decrease productivity in tech companies?

Focused on a particular industry and a hot topic, this research question could yield timely, actionable insights that would have high practical value in the real world.

How do economic downturns affect small businesses in the homebuilding industry?

Vital for policy-making, this highly specific research question aims to uncover the challenges faced by small businesses within a certain industry.

Which employee benefits have the greatest impact on job satisfaction?

By being straightforward and specific, answering this research question could provide tangible insights to employers.

Examples: Education

Next, let’s look at some potential research questions within the education, training and development domain.

How does class size affect students’ academic performance in primary schools?

This example research question targets two clearly defined variables, which can be measured and analysed relatively easily.

Do online courses result in better retention of material than traditional courses?

Timely, specific and focused, answering this research question can help inform educational policy and personal choices about learning formats.

What impact do US public school lunches have on student health?

Targeting a specific, well-defined context, the research could lead to direct changes in public health policies.

To what degree does parental involvement improve academic outcomes in secondary education in the Midwest?

This research question focuses on a specific context (secondary education in the Midwest) and has clearly defined constructs.

What are the negative effects of standardised tests on student learning within Oklahoma primary schools?

This research question has a clear focus (negative outcomes) and is narrowed into a very specific context.

Need a helping hand?

Examples: Healthcare

Shifting to a different field, let’s look at some examples of research questions within the healthcare space.

What are the most effective treatments for chronic back pain amongst UK senior males?

Specific and solution-oriented, this research question focuses on clear variables and a well-defined context (senior males within the UK).

How do different healthcare policies affect patient satisfaction in public hospitals in South Africa?

This question is has clearly defined variables and is narrowly focused in terms of context.

Which factors contribute to obesity rates in urban areas within California?

This question is focused yet broad, aiming to reveal several contributing factors for targeted interventions.

Does telemedicine provide the same perceived quality of care as in-person visits for diabetes patients?

Ideal for a qualitative study, this research question explores a single construct (perceived quality of care) within a well-defined sample (diabetes patients).

Which lifestyle factors have the greatest affect on the risk of heart disease?

This research question aims to uncover modifiable factors, offering preventive health recommendations.

Examples: Computer Science

Last but certainly not least, let’s look at a few examples of research questions within the computer science world.

What are the perceived risks of cloud-based storage systems?

Highly relevant in our digital age, this research question would align well with a qualitative interview approach to better understand what users feel the key risks of cloud storage are.

Which factors affect the energy efficiency of data centres in Ohio?

With a clear focus, this research question lays a firm foundation for a quantitative study.

How do TikTok algorithms impact user behaviour amongst new graduates?

While this research question is more open-ended, it could form the basis for a qualitative investigation.

What are the perceived risk and benefits of open-source software software within the web design industry?

Practical and straightforward, the results could guide both developers and end-users in their choices.

Remember, these are just examples…

In this post, we’ve tried to provide a wide range of research question examples to help you get a feel for what research questions look like in practice. That said, it’s important to remember that these are just examples and don’t necessarily equate to good research topics . If you’re still trying to find a topic, check out our topic megalist for inspiration.

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This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

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Research Topics

Cutting-edge research into the workings of the human mind

Our faculty conducts scientific research on topics that span across all areas of psychology. Some themes of research concentration are listed below. Click the topics to see the list of department faculty associated with each theme.

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Computational Approaches

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Developmental Approaches

Interventions

Learning & Memory

Mathematical Cognition

Meaning & Mental Representation

Motivation & Emotion

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Plasticity & Change

Psychopathology & Risk

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Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research

Generating Good Research Questions

Learning Objectives

• Describe some common sources of research ideas and generate research ideas using those sources.
• Describe some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
• Explain what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can appear mysterious—even magical—with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, psychological research on creativity has shown that it is neither as mysterious nor as magical as it appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993) [1] . This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.

Finding Inspiration

Research questions often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behaviour or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, learning, depression, bungee jumping, and so on. Before looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come from in the first place. Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.

Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behaviour as well as secondhand observations from nonscientific sources such as newspapers, books, blogs, and so on. For example, you might notice that you always seem to be in the slowest moving line at the grocery store. Could it be that most people think the same thing? Or you might read in a local newspaper about people donating money and food to a local family whose house has burned down and begin to wonder about who makes such donations and why. Some of the most famous research in psychology has been inspired by informal observations. Stanley Milgram’s famous research on obedience to authority, for example, was inspired in part by journalistic reports of the trials of accused Nazi war criminals—many of whom claimed that they were only obeying orders. This led him to wonder about the extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963) [2] .

Practical problems can also inspire research ideas, leading directly to applied research in such domains as law, health, education, and sports. Does taking lecture notes by hand improve students’ exam performance? How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy? To what extent do cell phones impair people’s driving ability? How can we teach children to read more efficiently? What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?

Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Recall that science is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other’s work and conduct new studies to build on it. Of course, experienced researchers are familiar with previous research in their area of expertise and probably have a long list of ideas. This suggests that novice researchers can find inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researcher (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also find inspiration by picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. In one typical issue of  Psychological Science , for example, you can find articles on the perception of shapes, anti-Semitism, police lineups, the meaning of death, second-language learning, people who seek negative emotional experiences, and many other topics. If you can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.g., memory) or domain (e.g., health care), you can also look through more specific journals, such as  Memory & Cognition  or  Health Psychology .

Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions

Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables. One way to do this is to look closely at the discussion section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past research, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the form of specific research questions, which you can then try to answer with additional research. This can be a good strategy because it is likely that the suggested questions have already been identified as interesting and important by experienced researchers.

But you may also want to generate your own research questions. How can you do this? First, if you have a particular behaviour or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are our memories of traumatic events? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.

If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behaviour or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a statistical relationship between that behaviour or characteristic and some other variable. One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.

• What are some possible causes of the behaviour or characteristic?
• What are some possible effects of the behaviour or characteristic?
• What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behaviour or characteristic?
• What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behaviour or characteristic?

In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a statistical relationship. If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a statistical relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behaviour or psychological characteristic.

If through this process you generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing. But what if you find that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to give up and move on to a new question at this point, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For one thing, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question can almost certainly be refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the research literature. Again, asking yourself a series of more general questions about the statistical relationship is a good strategy.

• Are there other ways to operationally define the variables?
• Are there types of people for whom the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker?
• Are there situations in which the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?

For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among university students in the United States and Mexico. We can still ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—perhaps the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the same result. Or we can ask whether studying elderly people or people from other cultures produces the same result. Again, this approach should help you generate many different research questions about almost any statistical relationship.

Evaluating Research Questions

Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

Interestingness

How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. But what makes a research question interesting in this sense? Here we look at three factors that affect the  interestingness  of a research question: the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

First, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that have been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting as the subject of new empirical research. But the fact that a question has not been answered by scientific research does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. But how can you assess this before actually collecting data? One approach is to try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense. If you can think of reasons to expect at least two different answers, then the question might be interesting. If you can think of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes.

A second important factor to consider when deciding if a research question is interesting is whether answering it will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has not already been answered by scientific research. But it also means that the question is in some sense a natural one for people who are familiar with the research literature. For example, the question of whether taking lecture notes by hand can help improve students’ exam performance would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on notetaking and the ineffectiveness of shallow processing on learning.

A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether taking notes by hand improves learning has important implications for education, including classroom policies concerning technology use. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

Feasibility

A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility  of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.

Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured while they carry out various mental tasks, and complex nonexperimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in part by government and private grants. Keep in mind also that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of university students and a paper-and-pencil task.

A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.

Key Takeaways

• Research ideas can come from a variety of sources, including informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.
• Research questions expressed in terms of variables and relationships between variables can be suggested by other researchers or generated by asking a series of more general questions about the behaviour or psychological characteristic of interest.
• It is important to evaluate how interesting a research question is before designing a study and collecting data to answer it. Factors that affect interestingness are the extent to which the answer is in doubt, whether it fills a gap in the research literature, and whether it has important practical implications.
• It is also important to evaluate how feasible a research question will be to answer. Factors that affect feasibility include time, money, technical knowledge and skill, and access to special equipment and research participants.
• Practice: Generate five research ideas based on each of the following: informal observations, practical problems, and topics discussed in recent issues of professional journals.
• Practice: Generate five empirical research questions about each of the following behaviours or psychological characteristics: long-distance running, getting tattooed, social anxiety, bullying, and memory for early childhood events.
• Practice: Evaluate each of the research questions you generated in Exercise 2 in terms of its interestingness based on the criteria discussed in this section.
• Practice: Find an issue of a journal that publishes short empirical research reports (e.g.,  Psychological Science ,  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review , Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin ). Pick three studies, and rate each one in terms of how feasible it would be for you to replicate it with the resources available to you right now. Use the following rating scale: (1) You could replicate it essentially as reported. (2) You could replicate it with some simplifications. (3) You could not replicate it. Explain each rating.

Video Attributions

• “ How to Develop a Good Research Topic ” by KStateLibraries . CC BY (Attribution)
• Weisberg, R. W. (1993). Creativity: Beyond the myth of genius . New York, NY: Freeman. ↵
• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioural study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 , 371–378. ↵

The level a research question is interesting to the scientific community and people in general.

the state or ability of being easily or conveniently completed.

Research Methods in Psychology - 2nd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2015 by Paul C. Price, Rajiv Jhangiani, & I-Chant A. Chiang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Developing a research question (northern kentucky university), developing a research question (indiana university).

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A research question is a statement that defines what is to be studied. It is the core of the research project, study, or literature review. Your research question  focuses the study, determines the methodology, and guides all stages of inquiry, analysis, and reporting.

Your research question should...

• Be focused 
• Identify the problem you're writing about
• Establish significance 

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• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 12:15 PM
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2.3 Generating Good Research Questions

Learning objectives.

• Describe some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
• Explain what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions

Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables. One way to do this is to look closely at the discussion section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past research, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the form of specific research questions, which you can then try to answer with additional research. This can be a good strategy because it is likely that the suggested questions have already been identified as interesting and important by experienced researchers.

But you may also want to generate your own research questions. How can you do this? First, if you have a particular behavior or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are our memories of traumatic events? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.

If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behavior or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a relationship between that behavior or characteristic and some other variable. One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.

• What are some possible causes of the behavior or characteristic?
• What are some possible effects of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?

In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a relationship. If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behavior or psychological characteristic.

If through this process you generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing. But what if you find that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to give up and move on to a new question at this point, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For one thing, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question can almost certainly be refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the research literature. Again, asking yourself a series of more general questions about the relationship is a good strategy.

• Are there other ways to define and measure the variables?
• Are there types of people for whom the relationship might be stronger or weaker?
• Are there situations in which the relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?

For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among university students in the United States and Mexico. We can still ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—perhaps the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the same result. Or we can ask whether studying elderly people or people from other cultures produces the same result. Again, this approach should help you generate many different research questions about almost any relationship.

Evaluating Research Questions

Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

Interestingness

How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. But what makes a research question interesting in this sense? Here we look at three factors that affect the  interestingness  of a research question: the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

First, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that have been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting as the subject of new empirical research. But the fact that a question has not been answered by scientific research does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. But how can you assess this before actually collecting data? One approach is to try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense. If you can think of reasons to expect at least two different answers, then the question might be interesting. If you can think of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes.

A second important factor to consider when deciding if a research question is interesting is whether answering it will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has not already been answered by scientific research. But it also means that the question is in some sense a natural one for people who are familiar with the research literature. For example, the question of whether taking lecture notes by hand can help improve students’ exam performance would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on note taking and the ineffectiveness of shallow processing on learning.

A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether taking notes by hand improves learning has important implications for education, including classroom policies concerning technology use. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

Feasibility

A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility  of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.

Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured while they carry out various mental tasks, and complex non-experimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in part by government and private grants. Also, keep in mind that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of university students and a paper-and-pencil task.

A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.

Key Takeaways

• Research questions expressed in terms of variables and relationships between variables can be suggested by other researchers or generated by asking a series of more general questions about the behavior or psychological characteristic of interest.
• It is important to evaluate how interesting a research question is before designing a study and collecting data to answer it. Factors that affect interestingness are the extent to which the answer is in doubt, whether it fills a gap in the research literature, and whether it has important practical implications.
• It is also important to evaluate how feasible a research question will be to answer. Factors that affect feasibility include time, money, technical knowledge and skill, and access to special equipment and research participants.
• Practice: Generate three research ideas based on each of the following: informal observations, practical problems, and topics discussed in recent issues of professional journals.
• Practice: Generate an empirical research question about each of the following behaviors or psychological characteristics: long-distance running, getting tattooed, social anxiety, bullying, and memory for early childhood events.
• Practice: Evaluate each of the research questions you generated in Exercise 2 in terms of its interestingness based on the criteria discussed in this section.
• Practice: Find an issue of a journal that publishes short empirical research reports (e.g.,  Psychological Science ,  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review , Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin ). Pick three studies, and rate each one in terms of how feasible it would be for you to replicate it with the resources available to you right now. Use the following rating scale: (1) You could replicate it essentially as reported. (2) You could replicate it with some simplifications. (3) You could not replicate it. Explain each rating.

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Psychology Research Methods: Creating a Research Question

• Creating a Research Question
• Search Terms
• Search Strategies
• Recording Your Research
• Finding Articles
• Finding Books
• Journal Articles
• Books & Other Sources
• Publisher URL

Choosing a Topic

Sometimes the most difficult part of the research process is choosing a topic.  Here are some tips for selecting a research question that you will enjoy learning about and will ultimately lead to a good grade.

• Read through your assignment.   Professors design an assignment outline for a reason.  Make sure your topic can and will adhere to their requirements and guidelines.
• Choose a topic you are interested in.   If you don't like what you're researching, chances are you won't learn a whole lot or enjoy the process.  And really, what's the point of that?  
• Browse resources that relate to your course work.  Look through a newspaper, magazine, or database for current events or hot topics.  Browsing can spark a lot of great ideas and can help you refine your topic.
• Ask for help!   There is nothing wrong with asking your professor or a librarian to help you brainstorm ideas.

Where to Start

The links below are great places to start in developing a research question.  Browsing current events and hot topics can spark your interest and inspire a topic.

• Alvernia's "Opposing Viewpoints" Collection
• Alvernia's Reference Collection
• Google Trends
• Health & Medicine
• Hot Paper Topics
• Hot Topics for Research Papers
• National Library of Medicine
• New York Times
• NPR Research News
• Pew Research Center
• Psychology Encyclopedias - eBooks
• Psychology Encyclopedias - print
• Public Agenda's Programs and Reports
• MedLinePlus This link opens in a new window
• Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new window

APA PsycINFO Guides

These APA PsycINFO guides include suggested subject terms to aid you in your research.

• Behavioral Economics
• Child Development
• Computers & the Internet
• Gerontology
• Grief & Trauma Counseling
• Integrative Medicine
• Marketing & Advertising
• Military Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psychology and The Law
• Public Health
• Religion & Spirituality
• Sexuality & Gender Identity
• Social Work

Helpful Tools

• bubbl.us - Brainstorming Made Simple
• Critical Thinking Model
• Glean Comparison Search
• Thesis Builder

How to Formulate an Answerable Clinical Question

P opulation/patients

I ntervention/indicator

C omparator/control

• P I C O: Formulate an Answerable Question
• Formulating Answerable Clinical Questions

Developing your Research Question

• Creating a Research Question Helps you to write a narrow, focused research question.

Try asking yourself these questions to help develop a research question:

Topic:  Obesity

Who?  teenagers

What?  consumption of high fat foods

Where?  school cafeterias

Question :  How does the consumption of high fat foods in school cafeterias contribute to teenager obesity?

Topic: Smoke Exposure

Who?   children exposed to smoke

What?   developmental abilities

Question :  How does smoke exposure alter the developmental abilities of children?

Below is worksheet which will help illustrate how a research question develops from a broad topic to a focused question.  This could be a helpful resource for you during the process of creating your research question.

Translating Your Research Question into a Search

Research Question:

Does the rate of medication compliance change when the number of prescribed medications increase for older adults?

1. Identify the main concepts

   Does the rate of  medication compliance  change when the  number  of prescribed medications increase for  older adults ?

2. Add related terms or synonyms 

    Things to consider        Example  

   synonyms                  drugs OR medications

   antonyms                   adherence OR nonadherence

• Use terms you would expect professionals to use in published articles
• Browse psychology encyclopedia articles for terms
• Check PsycINFO Guides

3. Connect related terms with OR.  Connect concepts with AND

(medication OR drugs) AND (compliance OR adherence OR nonadherence) AND (multiple OR polypharmacy) AND (elderly OR aged)

• << Previous: Research Help
• Next: Search Terms >>
• Last Updated: Aug 18, 2023 3:22 PM
• URL: https://alvernia.libguides.com/psychology_research

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Generating Good Research Questions

Rajiv S. Jhangiani; I-Chant A. Chiang; Carrie Cuttler; and Dana C. Leighton

Learning Objectives

• Describe some techniques for turning research ideas into empirical research questions and use those techniques to generate questions.
• Explain what makes a research question interesting and evaluate research questions in terms of their interestingness.

Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions

Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables. One way to do this is to look closely at the discussion section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past research, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the form of specific research questions, which you can then try to answer with additional research. This can be a good strategy because it is likely that the suggested questions have already been identified as interesting and important by experienced researchers.

But you may also want to generate your own research questions. How can you do this? First, if you have a particular behavior or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are our memories of traumatic events? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will learn when you conduct your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.

If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behavior or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a relationship between that behavior or characteristic and some other variable. One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.

• What are some possible causes of the behavior or characteristic?
• What are some possible effects of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?
• What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behavior or characteristic?

In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a relationship. If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behavior or psychological characteristic.

If through this process you generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing. But what if you find that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to give up and move on to a new question at this point, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For one thing, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question can almost certainly be refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the research literature. Again, asking yourself a series of more general questions about the relationship is a good strategy.

• Are there other ways to define and measure the variables?
• Are there types of people for whom the relationship might be stronger or weaker?
• Are there situations in which the relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?

For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among university students in the United States and Mexico. We can still ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—perhaps the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the same result. Or we can ask whether studying older adult people or people from other cultures produces the same result. Again, this approach should help you generate many different research questions about almost any relationship.

Evaluating Research Questions

Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.

Interestingness

How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. But what makes a research question interesting in this sense? Here we look at three factors that affect the  interestingness  of a research question: the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.

First, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that have been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting as the subject of new empirical research. But the fact that a question has not been answered by scientific research does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. But how can you assess this before actually collecting data? One approach is to try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense. If you can think of reasons to expect at least two different answers, then the question might be interesting. If you can think of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes.

A second important factor to consider when deciding if a research question is interesting is whether answering it will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has not already been answered by scientific research. But it also means that the question is in some sense a natural one for people who are familiar with the research literature. For example, the question of whether taking lecture notes by hand can help improve students’ exam performance would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on note taking and the ineffectiveness of shallow processing on learning.

A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether taking notes by hand improves learning has important implications for education, including classroom policies concerning technology use. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.

Feasibility

A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility  of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.

Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured while they carry out various mental tasks, and complex non-experimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in part by government and private grants. Also, keep in mind that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of university students and a paper-and-pencil task.

A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.

How interesting the question is to people generally or the scientific community. Three things need to be considered: Is the answer in doubt, fills a gap in research literature, and has important practical implications.

How likely is the research question going to be successfully answered depending on the amount of time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants there will be.

Generating Good Research Questions Copyright © by Rajiv S. Jhangiani; I-Chant A. Chiang; Carrie Cuttler; and Dana C. Leighton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Get Started on Your First Psychology Experiment

Acquiring even a little expertise in advance makes science research easier..

Updated May 16, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

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• Becoming something of an "expert" on a topic in advance makes designing a study go more smoothly.

One of the most rewarding and frustrating parts of my long career as a psychology professor at a small liberal arts college has been guiding students through the senior capstone research experience required near the end of their college years. Each psychology major must conduct an independent experiment in which they collect data to test a hypothesis, analyze the data, write a research paper, and present their results at a college poster session or at a professional conference.

The rewarding part of the process is clear: The students' pride at seeing their poster on display and maybe even getting their name on an article in a professional journal allows us professors to get a glimpse of students being happy and excited—for a change. I also derive great satisfaction from watching a student discover that he or she has an aptitude for research and perhaps start shifting their career plans accordingly.

The frustrating part comes at the beginning of the research process when students are attempting to find a topic to work on. There is a lot of floundering around as students get stuck by doing something that seems to make sense: They begin by trying to “think up a study.”

The problem is that even if the student's research interest is driven by some very personal topic that is deeply relevant to their own life, they simply do not yet know enough to know where to begin. They do not know what has already been done by others, nor do they know how researchers typically attack that topic.

Students also tend to think in terms of mission statements (I want to cure eating disorders) rather than in terms of research questions (Why are people of some ages or genders more susceptible to eating disorders than others?).

Needless to say, attempting to solve a serious, long-standing societal problem in a few weeks while conducting one’s first psychology experiment can be a showstopper.

Even a Little Bit of Expertise Can Go a Long Way

My usual approach to helping students get past this floundering stage is to tell them to try to avoid thinking up a study altogether. Instead, I tell them to conceive of their mission as becoming an “expert” on some topic that they find interesting. They begin by reading journal articles, writing summaries of these articles, and talking to me about them. As the student learns more about the topic, our conversations become more sophisticated and interesting. Researchable questions begin to emerge, and soon, the student is ready to start writing a literature review that will sharpen the focus of their research question.

In short, even a little bit of expertise on a subject makes it infinitely easier to craft an experiment on that topic because the research done by others provides a framework into which the student can fit his or her own work.

This was a lesson I learned early in my career when I was working on my own undergraduate capstone experience. Faced with the necessity of coming up with a research topic and lacking any urgent personal issues that I was trying to resolve, I fell back on what little psychological expertise I had already accumulated.

In a previous psychology course, I had written a literature review on why some information fails to move from short-term memory into long-term memory. The journal articles that I had read for this paper relied primarily on laboratory studies with mice, and the debate that was going on between researchers who had produced different results in their labs revolved around subtle differences in the way that mice were released into the experimental apparatus in the studies.

Because I already had done some homework on this, I had a ready-made research question available: What if the experimental task was set up so that the researcher had no influence on how the mouse entered the apparatus at all? I was able to design a simple animal memory experiment that fit very nicely into the psychological literature that was already out there, and this prevented a lot of angst.

Please note that my undergraduate research project was guided by the “expertise” that I had already acquired rather than by a burning desire to solve some sort of personal or social problem. I guarantee that I had not been walking around as an undergraduate student worrying about why mice forget things, but I was nonetheless able to complete a fun and interesting study.

My first experiment may not have changed the world, but it successfully launched my research career, and I fondly remember it as I work with my students 50 years later.

Frank McAndrew, Ph.D., is the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College.

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Asking for help is hard, but others want to help more than we often give them credit for, says Stanford social psychologist Xuan Zhao .

Xuan Zhao (Image credit: Anne Ryan)

We shy away from asking for help because we don’t want to bother other people, assuming that our request will feel like an inconvenience to them. But oftentimes, the opposite is true: People want to make a difference in people’s lives and they feel good – happy even – when they are able to help others, said Zhao.

Here, Zhao discusses the research about how asking for help can lead to meaningful experiences and strengthen relationships with others – friends as well as strangers.

Zhao is a research scientist at Stanford SPARQ , a research center in the Psychology Department that brings researchers and practitioners together to fight bias, reduce disparities, and drive culture change. Zhao’s research focuses on helping people create better social interactions in person and online where they feel seen, heard, connected, and appreciated. Her research, recently published in Psychological Science ,  suggests that people regularly underestimate others’ willingness to help.

This fall, Zhao will be co-teaching a two-session workshop Science-Based Practices for a Flourishing Life through Stanford’s well-being program for employees, BeWell.

Why is asking for help hard? For someone who finds it difficult to ask for help, what would you like them to know?

There are several common reasons why people struggle to ask for help. Some people may fear that asking for help would make them appear incompetent, weak, or inferior – recent research from Stanford doctoral student Kayla Good finds that children as young as seven can hold this belief. Some people are concerned about being rejected, which can be embarrassing and painful. Others may be concerned about burdening and inconveniencing others – a topic I recently explored.  These concerns may feel more relevant in some contexts than others, but they are all very relatable and very human.

The good news is those concerns are oftentimes exaggerated and mistaken.

What do people misunderstand about asking for help?

When people are in need of help, they are often caught up in their own concerns and worries and do not fully recognize the prosocial motivations of those around them who are ready to help. This can introduce a persistent difference between how help-seekers and potential helpers consider the same helping event. To test this idea, we conducted several experiments where people either directly interacted with each other to seek and offer help, or imagined or recalled such experiences in everyday life. We consistently observed that help-seekers underestimated how willing strangers – and even friends – would be to help them and how positive helpers would feel afterward, and overestimated how inconvenienced helpers would feel.

These patterns are consistent with work by Stanford psychologist Dale Miller showing that when thinking about what motivates other people, we tend to apply a more pessimistic, self-interested view about human nature. After all, Western societies tend to value independence, so asking others to go out of their way to do something for us may seem wrong or selfish and may impose a somewhat negative experience on the helper.

The truth is, most of us are deeply prosocial and want to make a positive difference in others’ lives. Work by Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki has shown that empathizing with and helping others in need seems to be an intuitive response, and dozens of studies , including my own, have found that people often feel happier after conducting acts of kindness. These findings extend earlier research by Stanford Professor Frank Flynn and colleagues suggesting that people tend to overestimate how likely their direct request for help would be rejected by others. Finally, other research has even shown that seeking advice can even boost how competent the help-seeker is seen by the advice-giver.

Why is asking for help particularly important? 

We love stories about spontaneous help, and that may explain why random acts of kindness go viral on social media. But in reality , the majority of help occurs only after a request has been made. It’s often not because people don’t want to help and must be pressed to do so. Quite the opposite, people want to help, but they can’t help if they don’t know someone is suffering or struggling, or what the other person needs and how to help effectively, or whether it is their place to help – perhaps they want to respect others’ privacy or agency. A direct request can remove those uncertainties, such that asking for help enables kindness and unlocks opportunities for positive social connections. It can also create emotional closeness when you realize someone trusts you enough to share their vulnerabilities, and by working together toward a shared goal.

It feels like some requests for help may be harder to ask than others. What does research say about different types of help, and how can we use those insights to help us figure out how we should ask for help?

Many factors can influence how difficult it may feel to ask for help. Our recent research has primarily focused on everyday scenarios where the other person is clearly able to help, and all you need is to show up and ask. In some other cases, the kind of help you need may require more specific skills or resources. As long as you make your request Specific, Meaningful, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time-bound (also known as the SMART criteria ), people will likely be happy to help and feel good after helping.

Of course, not all requests have to be specific. When we face mental health challenges, we may have difficulty articulating what kind of help we need. It is okay to reach out to mental health resources and take the time to figure things out together. They are there to help, and they are happy to help.

You mentioned how cultural norms can get in the way of people asking for help. What is one thing we can all do to rethink the role society plays in our lives?

Work on independent and interdependent cultures by Hazel Markus , faculty director of Stanford SPARQ , can shed much light on this issue. Following her insights, I think we can all benefit from having a little bit more interdependency in our micro- and macro-environments. For instance, instead of promoting “self-care” and implying that it is people’s own responsibility to sort through their own struggles, perhaps our culture could emphasize the value of caring for each other and create more safe spaces to allow open discussions about our challenges and imperfections.

What inspired your research?

I have always been fascinated by social interaction – how we understand and misunderstand each other’s minds, and how social psychology can help people create more positive and meaningful connections. That’s why I have studied topics such as giving compliments , discussing disagreement , sharing personal failures, creating inclusive conversations on social media , and translating social and positive psychology research as daily practices for the public . This project is also motivated by that general passion.

But a more immediate trigger of this project is reading scholarly work suggesting that the reason why people underestimate their likelihood of getting help is because they don’t recognize how uncomfortable and awkward it would be for someone to say “no” to their request. I agree that people underestimate their chance of getting help upon a direct ask, but based on my personal experience, I saw a different reason – when people ask me for help, I often feel genuinely motivated to help them, more than feeling social pressure and a wish to avoid saying no. This project is to voice my different interpretation on why people agree to help. And given that I’ve seen people who have struggled for too long until it was too late to ask for help, I hope my findings can offer them a bit more comfort when the next time they can really use a helping hand and are debating whether they should ask.

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Are We Talking Too Much About Mental Health?

Recent studies cast doubt on whether large-scale mental health interventions are making young people better. Some even suggest they can have a negative effect.

By Ellen Barry

In recent years, mental health has become a central subject in childhood and adolescence. Teenagers narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram. School systems, alarmed by rising levels of distress and self-harm, are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness.

Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing it. Mental health awareness campaigns, they argue, help some young people identify disorders that badly need treatment — but they have a negative effect on others, leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are.

The researchers point to unexpected results in trials of school-based mental health interventions in the United Kingdom and Australia: Students who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness , cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while.

And new research from the United States shows that among young people, “self-labeling” as having depression or anxiety is associated with poor coping skills, like avoidance or rumination.

In a paper published last year , two research psychologists at the University of Oxford, Lucy Foulkes and Jack Andrews, coined the term “prevalence inflation” — driven by the reporting of mild or transient symptoms as mental health disorders — and suggested that awareness campaigns were contributing to it.

“It’s creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional,” said Dr. Foulkes, a Prudence Trust Research Fellow in Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who has written two books on mental health and adolescence.

Until high-quality research has clarified these unexpected negative effects, they argue, school systems should proceed cautiously with large-scale mental health interventions.

“It’s not that we need to go back to square one, but it’s that we need to press pause and reroute potentially,” Dr. Foulkes said. “It’s possible that something very well-intended has overshot a bit and needs to be brought back in.”

This remains a minority view among specialists in adolescent mental health, who mostly agree that the far more urgent problem is lack of access to treatment.

About 60 percent of young Americans with severe depression receive no treatment, according to Mental Health America, a nonprofit research group. In crisis, desperate families fall back on emergency rooms, where teens often remain for days before a psychiatric bed opens up. There is good reason to embrace a preventive approach, teaching schoolchildren basic skills that might forestall crises later, experts say.

Dr. Foulkes said she understood that her argument runs counter to that consensus, and when she began to present it, she braced for a backlash. To her surprise, she said, many educators reached out to express quiet agreement.

“There’s definitely a fear about being the one to say it,” she said.

A deflating result

In the summer of 2022, the results of a landmark study on mindfulness training in British classrooms landed — like a lead balloon.

The trial, My Resilience in Adolescence, or MYRIAD, was ambitious, meticulous and expansive, following about 28,000 teenagers over eight years. It had been launched in a glow of optimism that the practice would pay off, improving the students’ mental health outcomes in later years.

Half of the teenagers were trained by their teachers to direct their attention to the present moment — breathing, physical sensations or everyday activities — in 10 lessons of 30 to 50 minutes apiece.

The results were disappointing . The authors reported “no support for our hypothesis” that mindfulness training would improve students’ mental health. In fact, students at highest risk for mental health problems did somewhat worse after receiving the training, the authors concluded.

But by the end of the eight-year project, “mindfulness is already embedded in a lot of schools, and there are already organizations making money from selling this program to schools,” said Dr. Foulkes, who had assisted on the study as a postdoctoral research associate. “And it’s very difficult to get the scientific message out there.”

Why, one might ask, would a mental health program do harm?

Researchers in the study speculated that the training programs “bring awareness to upsetting thoughts,” encouraging students to sit with darker feelings, but without providing solutions, especially for societal problems like racism or poverty. They also found that the students didn’t enjoy the sessions and didn’t practice at home.

Another explanation is that mindfulness training could encourage “co-rumination,” the kind of long, unresolved group discussion that churns up problems without finding solutions.

As the MYRIAD results were being analyzed, Dr. Andrews led an evaluation of Climate Schools, an Australian intervention based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, in which students observed cartoon characters navigating mental health concerns and then answered questions about practices to improve mental health.

Here, too, he found negative effects. Students who had taken the course reported higher levels of depression and anxiety symptoms six months and 12 months later.

Co-rumination appears to be higher in girls, who tend to come into the program more distressed, as well as more attuned to their friends, he said. “It might be,” he said, “that they kind of get together and make things a little bit worse for each other.”

Dr. Andrews, a Wellcome Trust research fellow, has since joined an effort to improve Climate Schools by addressing negative effects. And he has concluded that schools should slow down until “we know the evidence base a bit more.” Sometimes, he said, “doing nothing is better than doing something.”

The awareness paradox

One problem with mental health awareness, some research suggests, is that it may not help to put a label to your symptoms.

Isaac Ahuvia, a doctoral candidate at Stony Brook University, recently tested this in a study of 1,423 college students . Twenty-two percent “self-labeled” as having depression, telling researchers “I am depressed” or “I have depression,” but 39 percent met the diagnostic criteria for depression.

He found that the students who self-labeled felt that they had less control over depression and were more likely to catastrophize and less likely to respond to distress by putting their difficulties in perspective, compared with peers who had similar depression symptoms.

Jessica L. Schleider, a co-author of the self-labeling study, said this was no surprise. People who self-label “appear to be viewing depression as a biological inevitability,” she said. “People who don’t view emotions as malleable, view them as set and stuck and uncontrollable, tend to cope less well because they don’t see a point to trying.”

But Dr. Schleider, an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University and the director of the university’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health, pushed back on the prevalence inflation hypothesis. She disagreed with the claim that students are overdiagnosing themselves, noting that Mr. Ahuvia’s findings suggest otherwise.

Awareness campaigns are bound to have multiple effects, helping some students and not others. And ultimately, she argued, the priority for public health should be reaching young people in the most distress.

“The urgency of the mental health crisis is so clear,” she said. “In the partnerships that I have, the emphasis is on the kids truly struggling right now who have nothing — we need to help them — more so than a possible risk for a subset of kids who aren’t really struggling.”

Maybe, she said, we need to look beyond the “universal, school-assembly-style approach,” to targeted, light-touch interventions, which research has shown can be effective at decreasing anxiety and conduct disorders, especially in younger children.

“There is a risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” Dr. Schleider said. “The response can’t be ‘Forget all of it.’ It should be ‘What about this intervention was unhelpful?’”

Other researchers echoed her concern, pointing to studies that show that on average, students benefit from social and emotional learning courses.

One of the largest, a 2023 meta-analysis of 252 classroom programs in 53 countries, found that students who participated performed better academically, displayed better social skills and had lower levels of emotional distress or behavioral problems. In that context, negative effects in a handful of trials appear modest, the researchers said.

“We clearly have not figured out how to do them yet, but I can’t imagine any population-based intervention that the field got right the first time,” said Dr. Andrew J. Gerber, the president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital and a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist.

“Really, if you think about almost everything we do in schools, we don’t have great evidence for it working,” he added. “That doesn’t mean we don’t do it. It just means that we’re constantly thinking about ways to improve it.”

‘We want everyone to have it’

These debates are taking place a long way away from classrooms, where mental health curriculums are increasingly commonplace.

Allyson Kangisser, a counselor at Woodsdale Elementary School in Wheeling, W.Va., said the focus in her school is on basic coping skills. In the early grades, students are asked, “What things can you do to take care of yourself when you’re having big feelings?”

Starting in third grade, they take on more complex material, such as watching cartoon characters to distinguish transient stress from chronic conditions like depression. “We’re not trying to have them diagnose themselves,” Ms. Kangisser said. “We are saying, what do you feel — this one? Or this one?”

At the school’s sixth annual mental health fair last month, Woodsdale students walked through a giant inflatable brain, its lobes neatly labeled. They did yoga stretches and talked about regulating their emotions. Ms. Kangisser said the event is valuable precisely because it is universal, so troubled children are not singled out.

“The mental health fair, everybody does it,” she said. “It’s not ‘You need it, and you don’t.’ We want everyone to have it, because you just never know.”

By the time the students reach college, they will have absorbed enormous amounts of information about mental health — from school, but also from social media and from one another.

Dr. Jessica Gold, chief wellness officer for the University of Tennessee system, said the college students she sees are recognizably different — more comfortable speaking about their emotions and more willing to be vulnerable. They also overuse diagnostic terms and have the self-assurance to question a psychiatrist’s judgment.

“It’s sort of a double-edged sword,” she said. “We want people to talk about this more, but we don’t want that to lead to overdiagnosis or incorrect diagnosis or overtreatment. We want it to lead to normalizing of having feelings.”

Lucy Kim, a Yale senior who has lobbied for better mental health support on campus, described the prevalence inflation hypothesis as “disheartening, dismissive and potentially dangerous,” providing another way to discount the experiences of young people.

“As a college student, I see a generation of young people around me impacted by a depth and breadth of loneliness, exhaustion and disillusionment suggestive of a malaise that goes deeper than the general vicissitudes of life,” said Ms. Kim, 23.

Overdiagnosis does happen, she said, and so does glorification of mental health disorders. But stigma and barriers to treatment remain the bigger problem. “I can confidently say I have never heard anyone respond to disclosures of depression with ‘That’s so cool, I wish I had that, too,’” she said.

Ellen Barry is a reporter covering mental health for The Times. More about Ellen Barry

Managing Anxiety and Stress

Stay balanced in the face of stress and anxiety with our collection of tools and advice..

How are you, really? This self-guided check-in will help you take stock of your emotional well-being — and learn how to make changes .

These simple and proven strategies will help you manage stress , support your mental health and find meaning in the new year.

First, bring calm and clarity into your life with these 10 tips . Next, identify what you are dealing with: Is it worry, anxiety or stress ?

Persistent depressive disorder is underdiagnosed, and many who suffer from it have never heard of it. Here is what to know .

New research suggests people tend to be lonelier in young adulthood and late life. But experts say it doesn’t have to be that way .

How much anxiety is too much? Here is how to establish whether you should see a professional about it .

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Overview of the Scientific Method

8 Finding a Research Topic

Learning objectives.

• Learn some common sources of research ideas.
• Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
• Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a particular research idea or question.

Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can appear mysterious—even magical—with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, psychological research on creativity has shown that it is neither as mysterious nor as magical as it appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993) [1] . This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.

Finding Inspiration

Research questions often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behavior or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, learning, depression, bungee jumping, and so on. Before looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come from in the first place. Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.

Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behavior as well as secondhand observations from non-scientific sources such as newspapers, books, blogs, and so on. For example, you might notice that you always seem to be in the slowest moving line at the grocery store. Could it be that most people think the same thing? Or you might read in a local newspaper about people donating money and food to a local family whose house has burned down and begin to wonder about who makes such donations and why. Some of the most famous research in psychology has been inspired by informal observations. Stanley Milgram’s famous research on obedience to authority, for example, was inspired in part by journalistic reports of the trials of accused Nazi war criminals—many of whom claimed that they were only obeying orders. This led him to wonder about the extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963) [2] .

Practical problems can also inspire research ideas, leading directly to applied research in such domains as law, health, education, and sports. Does taking lecture notes by hand improve students’ exam performance? How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy? To what extent do cell phones impair people’s driving ability? How can we teach children to read more efficiently? What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?

Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Recall that science is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other’s work and conduct new studies to build on it. Of course, experienced researchers are familiar with previous research in their area of expertise and probably have a long list of ideas. This suggests that novice researchers can find inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researcher (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also find inspiration by picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. In one typical issue of  Psychological Science , for example, you can find articles on the perception of shapes, anti-Semitism, police lineups, the meaning of death, second-language learning, people who seek negative emotional experiences, and many other topics. If you can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.g., memory) or domain (e.g., health care), you can also look through more specific journals, such as  Memory & Cognition  or  Health Psychology .

Reviewing the Research Literature

Once again, one of the most common sources of inspiration is previous research. Therefore, it is important to review the literature early in the research process. The  research literature  in any field is all the published research in that field. Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your topic of interest. In addition to helping you discover new research questions, reviewing the literature early in the research process can help you in several other ways.

• It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
• It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
• It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
• It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but because its authors are anonymous and may not have any formal training or expertise in that subject area, and its content continually changes it is unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.

Professional Journals

Professional journals  are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several articles. The issues are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and still others in electronic form only.

Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles.  Empirical research reports  describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. Review articles  summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a theoretical article . When a review article provides a statistical summary of all of the previous results it is referred to as a  meta-analysis .

Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process of  double-blind peer review . Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor along with recommendations about whether the manuscript should be published or not. The editor then decides whether to accept the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. In any case, the editor forwards the reviewers’ written comments to the researchers so that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. This entire process is double-blind, as the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(s) and vice versa. Double-blind peer review is helpful because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature. However, in order to increase transparency and accountability, some newer open access journals (e.g., Frontiers in Psychology ) utilize an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the journal article.

Scholarly Books

Scholarly books  are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A  monograph  is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually, gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article.  Edited volumes have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.

Literature Search Strategies

Using psycinfo and other databases.

The primary method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for education, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO, which is produced by the American Psychological Association (APA). PsycINFO is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your university library.

PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (like the one presented at the start of this chapter), and a list of other works cited by that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can look somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and also a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful because they are standardized. Research on differences between females and males, for example, is always indexed under “Human Sex Differences.” Research on note-taking is always indexed under the term “Learning Strategies.” If you do not know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you find them.

Given that there are nearly four million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you find what you are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether males and females differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very young. If you were to enter the search term “memory,” it would return far too many records to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering “memory” into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is “early memories.” While searching for “early memories” among the index terms still returns too many to look through individually—combining it with “human sex differences” as a second search term returns fewer articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.

Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, print, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the work, you will have to find out if your library carries the journal or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you need help.

Using Other Search Techniques

In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with any relevant article or book chapter you find. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author’s name or article’s title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead you directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers’ own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might also lead you to websites that are not part of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.

What to Search For

When you do a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do four basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help you find the most useful sources.

First, it is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, “recent” might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right now, “recent” might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that turn up in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then, by all means, you should include it in your review.

Second, you should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You should also look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas about how to measure your variables and collect your data. As a general rule, it is good to use methods that others have already used successfully unless you have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that can help you argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of cell phone use on driving ability, for example, you might look for information about how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and so on.

How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. One study found that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003) [3] . This gives a rough idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. As a student, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to include, but the principles for selecting the most useful ones remain the same.

Video Attributions

• “ How to Develop a Good Research Topic ” by  KStateLibraries .  CC BY (Attribution)
• “ Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost ” by  APA Publishing Training . Standard YouTube Licence.
• “ Using Google Scholar (CLIP) ” by  clipinfolit .  CC BY (Attribution)
• Weisberg, R. W. (1993). Creativity: Beyond the myth of genius . New York, NY: Freeman. ↵
• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 , 371–378. ↵
• Adair, J. G., & Vohra, N. (2003). The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology’s unique response to a crisis. American Psychologist, 58 , 15–23. ↵

All the published research in that field.

Are periodicals that publish original research articles.

Research reports that describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors.

Articles that summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results.

A review article that is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory.

A review article that provides a statistical summary of all of the previous results.

A process in which the reviewers of a research article do not know the identity of the researcher(s) and vice versa.

Books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners.

A coherent written presentation of a topic much like an extended review article written by a single author or a small group of authors.

Books that are collections of chapters written by different authors on different aspects of the same topic, and overseen by one or more editors.

A comprehensive electronic database covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2019 by Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Carrie Cuttler, & Dana C. Leighton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY:Research Methods Quiz

Subject: Psychology

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Game/puzzle/quiz

Last updated

19 May 2024

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A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY: Research Methods Quiz This quiz features 50 multiple-choice questions encompassing a wide range of topics in the research methods and statistics module. It serves as an excellent revision tool for exams or an end-of-module assessment.

This quiz includes: Quiz slides (.ppt) - two versions: answers as you go + answers at the end Worksheet with entire quiz - if setting quiz as independent work Quiz response sheet - alternatively, students can record the answers on paper Answer sheet

The quiz provides students with an invaluable opportunity to test their understanding of key terms and concepts. It covers definitions, the purposes of various experimental features, strengths and limitations, and much more.

Students can enhance their learning experience by competing individually, collaborating in small teams, or using the worksheet for independent study instead of the PowerPoint presentation.

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60 "How Well Do You Know Me" Questions to Improve Your Relationships

Learn the right questions—and the right way to ask them

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Ivy Kwong, LMFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in relationships, love and intimacy, trauma and codependency, and AAPI mental health.  

• Reasons to Ask
• Questions About Your History
• Questions About Goals
• Questions About Likes and Dislikes
• Questions About Feelings and Fears
• Questions for Couples
• Tips That Can Help

"How well do you know me?" is a game you've probably played before with your friends, family members, or significant others. It's a simple activity that can be a great way to remind people how important they are to one another and even help them get to know one another better.

It often goes like this: One person asks a question of the other person or the group. These questions are centered around a specific aspects of a person's life, interests, or history. The depth of these questions often varies depending on the nature of the relationship, how long you've known each other, and how well you know each other.

According to Domenique Harrison MPH, LMFT, LPCC, known as The Racial Equity Therapist , such questions often come from a genuine desire for security, closeness, and connection. "While having curiosity about the lives of those close to you can come from a reflective and introspective place, some individuals may have an ulterior motive to test or stump their loved ones," she also notes.

At a Glance

For recent acquaintances, “How well do you know me” questions might be fairly simple. Examples include things such as: What's my favorite color? What's my favorite movie? and What's my middle name? Such questions tend to be a bit too surface-level for people who have known each other for a very long time or who are very close.

In such cases, you'll want to dig a little deeper to pose some more challenging "How well do you know me" questions that reveal a bit more about the depth of your relationship–and help foster an even closer connection. Let’s take a closer look at the reasons why you might want to ask such questions–plus how to ask them the right way to get a meaningful response that helps improve your relationship.

fizkes / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Reasons to Ask "How Well Do You Know Me" Questions

The goal of "How well do you know me" questions is to help deepen the connection between people. By prompting the other person to answer such questions, people are encouraged to think about what they know about the person (as well as some of the things they don't know but might want to).

"These questions can come from two places, one healthy and one less so. Sometimes, these are playful quizzes, sort of like the old game show 'The Newlywed Game.' In fact, I have seen a version played on 'Married at First Sight.' In those cases, it’s a game, more about memory than about commitment, and it’s fun. Healthy!" says integrative therapist Renée Zavislak , MS, MA, LMFT.

In other cases, such questions may have a less well-intentioned side.

Other times, one asks their partner questions like this to prove that the other doesn't listen or doesn't care. This is a less than healthy approach that can draw faulty, relationship-threatening conclusions from insufficient data.

However, she also notes that this is an understandable thought process. Being seen is an important parts of attachment . Many times, these asking these questions stems from a desire to feel seen by our partners, she suggests.

Some other reasons you might opt to pose such questions include:

Authentic, Honest Communication

"How well do you know me" questions encourage people to be honest and open with one another. This can help improve communication and help people to discuss experiences, memories, thoughts, and feelings that might not otherwise come up in their day-to-day conversations.

"Such questions would be a fun and interactive way to check common knowledge and shared experience, which helps to develop connections among people," says Niloufar Esmaeilpour, MSc, RCC-ACS, a registered clinical counselor at Lotus Therapy & Counselling Centre . 

Forging Trust

Mutual self-disclosure plays an important role in any relationship, whether it's with your friends or your romantic partners. As you get to know one another better, there is a natural back-and-forth where each person reveals increasingly personal information about themselves.

As you share more information, you also start to establish a sense of trust and intimacy. You know each other better, so you also feel more comfortable sharing parts of yourself you might otherwise keep hidden.

Identifying Opportunities for Improvement and Growth

"How well do you know me" questions are also a great way to spot areas in your relationship that could use a little work. As you ask and answer these questions, you might find yourself thinking, "I can't believe they didn't know that about me!" or "How did I not know that about them?" 

The more questions you ask, the more you can see patterns and tendencies. For example, you might notice that while the other person knows much about your current experiences, they don't know much about your past. Or you might realize you've been holding back on sharing your thoughts and opinions. In either case, it's a great opportunity to see how you can improve.

It's normal for people not to know all the answers to these questions–after all, no one can know everything about another person.

Sometimes, these questions are less about seeing what the other person knows and more about giving you the opportunity to give an open and honest answer. They can provide a springboard for self-disclosure , which can help forge a closer, stronger, and more intimate connection between people.

Avoid Potentially Triggering Topics

One important thing to remember is that you should avoid potentially triggering questions that might evoke traumatic memories . Stick to topics that aren't likely to make people uncomfortable–and be ready to stop if someone brings up a boundary or becomes upset.

"How Well Do You Know Me" Questions About Personal History

Questions that focus on your personal history are often best suited for people who have known you for a little while. Even if you didn’t know each other as kids, they’ve gotten to know you well enough and heard enough of your stories, so they have a pretty good chance of answering these questions with some accuracy.

When a question does stump them, it’s a great opportunity to share information that will help them get to know you a lot better.

• Who was my favorite teacher, and why did they leave such an impact on my life?
• What’s something that happened in my childhood that really affected who I am today?
• What was the silly nickname that my parents used to call me as a child?
• What did I like the most about my first job?
• What was my favorite thing about the place where I grew up?
• What was my favorite thing to do with my friends when I was a child?
• What things were the biggest challenges in my life during my childhood?
• Which of my family traditions would I like to continue in my own home?
• What hidden talent or skill did I develop when I was younger, and why is it still important to me today?
• What is my most cherished memory from my childhood that reveals something important about who I am now?
• What's the most unexpected or surprising thing you've ever learned about me?
• Did I have any dreams or aspirations when I was younger that I secretly still want to pursue?

"How Well Do You Know Me" Questions About Goals and Dreams

These questions are a great way to dig a little deeper and see how much the other person knows about your hopes and dreams. Such questions allow people to think deeply about your goals and learn a bit more about the sorts of things that motivate you. This can also be a great opportunity for you to find support and encouragement, which can further strengthen your bond.

• What is my single greatest aspiration in life?
• Can you list three things that are on my bucket list?
• Where would I go if I could visit any place in the world?
• Are there any things that you think I could learn how to do that would suit my interests and passions?
• If I had to change careers today, what would I want to do?
• If I could change anything about myself, what would it be?
• Have I ever talked about a dream that I gave up on? What were some reasons I decided to let that dream go?
• Can you think of a time when I faced a major setback? How did I handle it, and how did I move forward or overcome it?
• Do I have any fears, anxieties, or hesitations that keep me from achieving my goals?
• Do I have any childhood dreams that are still important to me today? Why do you think they are so long-lasting and significant to me?

"How Well Do You Know Me" Questions About Likes and Dislikes

Likes and dislikes are often the classic type of question people focus on when they ask “How well do you know me?” Instead of focusing on the basics like your favorite color, movie, or food, let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

The following questions mine some of the same themes, but are designed to see how much the other person knows about the reasons behind your top faves and pet peeves.

• What is it about my favorite type of music that I enjoy the most?
• What was it that drew me to the career I have now, and would I choose it again if I had it to do over?
• What's a guilty pleasure of mine that I don't like to admit to enjoying? What is it about it I like so much (and why do I feel guilty for enjoying it)?
• Do I have any favorite songs, movies, or TV shows that are attached to some specific favorite memories of mine?
• What's something I dislike that always puts me in a bad mood?
• Have I ever mentioned a favorite place or activity that holds a special place in my heart?
• Are there any hobbies I would like to pursue if I just had the time?

"How Well Do You Know Me" Questions About Feelings and Fears

One of the hallmarks of a healthy relationship is the ability to be vulnerable and talk about what’s most important to you and what you fear most. The following questions focus on some of your innermost emotions, including your views of yourself and how you feel about the future.

Such questions may require being more vulnerable, open, and honest, which isn't always easy). However, they can also foster greater understanding, closeness, and empathy .

• What do I want people to remember me for the most?
• If I could change anything that has happened in my life, what would it be?
• If you could be anyone else for one day, who would it be?
• What scares me the most about the future?
• If I could change anything about the world today, what would it be?
• What would I do with my day if I found out that I only had 24 hours left to live?
• Are there any situations where I struggle to control my emotions or how I express them?
• What's my biggest fear or insecurity, and what effect does it have on my life?
• Have I ever shared any recurring dreams or nightmares? What do you think those dreams say about my underlying feelings or fears?
• Is there any piece of media, such as song, movie, book, or work of art, that always evokes a strong emotional reaction whenever I experience it?
• What situations tend to make me feel the most vulnerable?
• Do I have any mantras or affirmations that help me feel secure, motivated, and encouraged?

"How Well Do You Know Me" Questions for Couples

Talking to your partner about what matters most to you in a relationship and how you see your future together can help bring you closer together. Having your partner ask such questions allows you to connect with them on a deeper level.

• What’s something about me that most people don't know?
• What did I think of you when I first met you?
• Where do I see us in five years?
• What do I like the most about myself?
• If I could spend money on anything, what would I buy?
• What is most important to me in a relationship?
• What’s my love language, and what effect does it have on how we relate to one another?
• What was my most embarrassing childhood memory?
• What's my favorite way to spend a lazy weekend day?
• What's my comfort food when I'm feeling down?
• Can you name a time in our relationship when I felt the closest to you? What made that moment so special?
• Has there ever been a time when I was surprised by something you did?
• What's something I've always wanted to know about you but have been afraid to ask?
• What's one thing about our relationship that I would change if I could?
• What do I consider to be the biggest red flag or dealbreaker in a relationship?
• What’s one of the less conventional traits or characteristics I find the most attractive about another person?
• Which actions and gestures help me to feel the most loved and appreciated?
• Are there any dreams or goals I've had to put on hold because of other priorities?
• What's a fear or insecurity of mine that affects how we communicate and connect as a couple?

Tips for Asking “How Well Do You Know Me” Questions

The great thing about "How well do you know me" questions is that they can be a comfortable way to initiate what can become a deep and meaningful conversation with another person. Research suggests that while they want to have these kinds of conversations, they often feel uncomfortable or unsure about how to initiate such discussions.

So what can you do to make sure that asking these questions feels safe and comfortable for everyone involved?

First, make sure that you pick the right time for a conversation. Some ideas include spending leisure time together or going on a date. It can also be a great way to pass the time during a car trip. The key is to choose a time and setting where you can focus on the conversation without a lot of distractions and where neither person feels stressed or pressured.

If someone else is asking you these questions, really pay attention to what you know about them, says Reena B. Patel , MA, LEP, BCBA, a psychologist and Licensed Educational Board-Certified Behavior Analyst. "The more you recall and show your partner or friend or coworker you remember their interests, the better it shows them how invested you are in the connection and relationship," she suggests.

Consider Your Own Reasons for Asking

Zavislak suggests that before you pose such questions, start by checking in with yourself to evaluate how you are feeling and assess your goals for asking such questions.

For example, if you are asking them because some aspect of your current relationship is triggering unresolved feelings from your past, you may be better off telling them what you want them to know rather than posing it as a quiz. Doing so allows you to express vulnerability and build greater intimacy with your partner without evoking defensiveness .

She also recommends modeling the behaviors you want, not what you get. If you want your partner to know more about you, start by asking them questions about themselves.

Here’s the thing: setting a partner up for failure by asking a question we assume they can’t answer correctly will work directly against healthy attachment. Tap into what is really going on, assume positive intent, and you are much more likely to achieve the security you crave.

While it can be helpful and important to know the answers to some of these questions, knowing the exact answers is not an accurate indication of how well you know or how much you love your partner, and vice versa.

Many of these questions are fluid and the answers can change depending on a variety of factors. The answers can evolve as you evolve as individuals and in your relationship. The intention of "how well do you know me" questions can be to open up a dialogue, connect in a meaningful and intentional way, and asked from a place of playfulness and curiosity instead of judgment, criticism, or shame.

Instead of quizzing a partner or guessing if you don't know the answers, the questions can also be asked directly to deepen connection and intimacy.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."