A good research question looks different in law than in nursing or engineering. For twelve programmes you will find twenty examples each, with the type of question, a method that can produce the answer, and what a supervisor in that discipline tends to look for.
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Every example on this page is fictional. The examples show how a question is reasoned through, not a question to copy: your own question starts from your own topic and is agreed with your supervisor.
Each programme opens with what a supervisor in that discipline expects from a research question and the methodological ideas behind it. Then come twenty examples, each with its type and a method that could produce the answer, and finally the pitfall that students in that programme run into most often.
Jump to: Law, Psychology, Nursing and midwifery, Business, Education, Social care and social work, Computer science, Engineering, History, English literature and linguistics, Medicine and health sciences, Sociology and politics.
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Free preview of your dissertationWhatever the programme, supervisors in Ireland tend to check the same six things:
Every example below is labelled with one of these types. This is how you recognise them:
| Type | What the question wants to know | Typical wording |
|---|---|---|
| Descriptive | What something is like or how it happens | How ..., What ..., Which ... |
| Comparative | How two or more groups, periods or settings differ | Do ... differ ..., How does ... compare with ... |
| Explanatory | Why something is the case: association or cause | Is ... associated with ..., What explains ..., Why ... |
| Evaluative | Whether an approach, policy or intervention works or meets a standard | To what extent ..., Does ... reduce ... |
| Design-oriented | How something can be designed or improved against requirements set in advance | How can ... be designed so that ... |
| Normative | What ought to be, judged against a stated benchmark | Is ... compatible with ..., Should ... |
| Exploratory | What is going on in a field with little prior research | How do ... experience ..., How do ... describe ... |
A good research question in law names a specific legal problem and says which area of law, which rule and which period you are examining. Most LLB and LLM dissertations use doctrinal analysis of legislation, case law and commentary, sometimes alongside comparative or socio-legal methods.
Doctrinal research asks what the law is, or what it ought to be, and answers from authority: Bunreacht na hÉireann, statute, the judgments of the superior courts and EU law, each given its proper weight. Socio-legal research asks how law operates in practice and needs its own methodology, such as interviews, case file analysis or court observation, with a justified sample. A normative question needs a benchmark stated at the outset, for instance a constitutional right, a standard under the European Convention on Human Rights or the stated purpose of the legislature. If you compare Ireland with another jurisdiction, explain why that jurisdiction, and make the comparison functional: how each system deals with the same problem, rather than two statutes described side by side.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| Has the superior courts' approach to defective search warrants since 2015 weakened the protection of the dwelling under Article 40.5 of Bunreacht na hÉireann? | Evaluative | Doctrinal analysis of superior court judgments |
| Should the offence of coercive control in section 39 of the Domestic Violence Act 2018 be defined more precisely to satisfy the requirement of legal certainty in criminal law? | Normative | Doctrinal analysis of the Act, case law and commentary |
| How do Irish and English law differ in the remedies available to a cohabitant when a long-term relationship ends? | Comparative | Functional comparison of Irish and English law |
| To what extent does the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 meet the standard of supported decision-making in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities? | Evaluative | Doctrinal analysis of the Act against the Convention |
| Do the mandatory retirement ages accepted by adjudication officers since 2018 meet the test of objective justification in the Employment Equality Acts 1998 to 2015? | Evaluative | Analysis of published adjudication decisions |
| Should Irish law give a statutory right of action against the developer of an AI system for harm it causes, in light of the EU AI Act? | Normative | Analysis of Irish tort law, EU legislation and commentary |
| Does the Data Protection Act 2018 give a primary school a clear lawful basis for recording pupils' progress in a cloud-based app? | Evaluative | Analysis of the Act, the GDPR and regulatory guidance |
| How can a data-sharing clause between a post-primary school and an educational software provider be drafted so that it meets Article 28 of the GDPR? | Design-oriented | Analysis of the GDPR and guidance, drafting and testing a model clause |
| Are awards of general damages more consistent since the Personal Injuries Guidelines replaced the Book of Quantum? | Evaluative | Analysis of reported awards before and after the Guidelines |
| How do solicitors in County Donegal experience the cross-border enforcement of family law orders since Brexit? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews with practitioners |
| Has the threshold of reasonable cause to suspect for a search under section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 been read so broadly that it no longer limits police discretion? | Evaluative | Doctrinal analysis of case law |
| Does the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Act 2022 give private sector workers the protection against penalisation that the EU Whistleblowing Directive requires? | Evaluative | Comparison of the transposing Act with the Directive |
| How does the Irish rule on unconstitutionally obtained evidence after DPP v JC compare with the approach of the Canadian courts? | Comparative | Comparative doctrinal analysis |
| Is the regulation of harmful online content under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 compatible with freedom of expression under the Constitution and Article 10 ECHR? | Normative | Doctrinal analysis of the Act, case law and commentary |
| Has the public sector equality and human rights duty in section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014 proved enforceable in judicial review? | Evaluative | Analysis of case law and commentary |
| What legal obstacles do community groups in the west of Ireland report when they object to wind farm planning applications? | Exploratory | Interviews with members of community groups, analysis of planning decisions |
| Do the remedies for faulty digital content in the Consumer Rights Act 2022 give consumers protection comparable to the remedies for faulty goods? | Comparative | Doctrinal analysis of the Act and the Digital Content Directive |
| To what extent have the aftercare provisions added to the Child Care Act 1991 in 2015 created enforceable entitlements for young people leaving care? | Evaluative | Doctrinal analysis of statute, case law and policy |
| Which factors do criminal practitioners in Dublin say influence decisions to refuse bail under the Bail Act 1997? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews with solicitors and barristers |
| How should Irish law deal with home security cameras that record neighbouring property, given the household exemption in the GDPR and the case law of the CJEU? | Normative | Analysis of the GDPR, CJEU case law and Irish law |
In psychology, the research question names the construct or phenomenon, the population and the kind of relationship you are looking for. Common designs are experiments, surveys with validated scales, longitudinal studies and qualitative interviews analysed with thematic analysis or interpretative phenomenological analysis.
Psychological questions are about constructs, such as loneliness or working memory, that cannot be observed directly, so the question depends on how you operationalise them and on a measure with evidence of reliability and validity in a comparable population. The design sets the ceiling on your claims: a single survey shows association, while a causal claim needs random allocation. A longitudinal design establishes temporal order, but confounding still limits what you can say. State your hypotheses before you collect data and run a power analysis, so the sample can detect the effect size you expect. In a final year project, a narrow, well-powered question usually serves you better than a broad model with many predictors.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| Is perfectionism associated with procrastination among first-year undergraduates at a university in Cork? | Explanatory | Survey with validated scales, regression analysis |
| Does a five-minute paced breathing exercise before a statistics test reduce self-reported test anxiety compared with a reading task among second-year psychology students? | Evaluative | Randomised experiment with two conditions |
| How do adult children experience the move of a parent with dementia into a nursing home in the midlands? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, interpretative phenomenological analysis |
| Do bilingual children in Gaeltacht primary schools and monolingual English-speaking children differ in performance on an inhibitory control task? | Comparative | Cognitive task with two groups, controlling for age and socio-economic background |
| Does sleep quality at the start of the academic year predict wellbeing three months later among students living away from home in Galway? | Explanatory | Longitudinal survey with two waves |
| What meaning do young employees in Dublin give to hybrid working in relation to their sense of belonging at work? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, reflexive thematic analysis |
| Is an existing social anxiety scale reliable and valid when used with Irish adolescents aged 15 to 17? | Evaluative | Psychometric analysis, confirmatory factor analysis |
| Does the order in which positive and negative information about a job applicant is presented change recruiters' hiring judgements? | Explanatory | Vignette experiment with random allocation |
| Which coping strategies do counsellors in student counselling services report after emotionally demanding sessions? | Descriptive | Open-ended survey and interviews, thematic analysis |
| Is time spent on image-based social media associated with body dissatisfaction among girls in senior cycle at schools in Leinster? | Explanatory | Cross-sectional survey, regression analysis |
| Do general practitioners and psychologists differ in how they rate the severity of depression in the same written case description? | Comparative | Vignette study with two professional groups |
| How can a short psychoeducation module on early signs of burnout be designed for line managers in a regional hospital, and how do they rate the prototype? | Design-oriented | Literature review, co-design workshops and usability testing |
| How do adolescents with ADHD experience the move from primary to post-primary school in Ireland? | Exploratory | Interviews with adolescents and parents |
| How common is loneliness among adults over 65 living alone in rural County Roscommon, and which groups report it most? | Descriptive | Survey with a validated loneliness scale, descriptive statistics |
| Does a social norms message on trays reduce the amount of food left on plates in a university canteen? | Evaluative | Field experiment with message and control days |
| Is participation in Gaelic games associated with self-esteem among adolescent girls, after accounting for overall physical activity? | Explanatory | Survey with validated scales, hierarchical regression |
| How do people who gamble online describe the part sports betting advertising plays in their gambling? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis |
| Does a short video about Traveller culture change explicit and implicit attitudes towards Travellers among undergraduates, compared with a control video? | Evaluative | Randomised experiment with pre-test and post-test |
| Do eyewitnesses who give a free recall account before an identity parade make fewer identification errors than eyewitnesses who do not? | Explanatory | Laboratory experiment with a staged event on video |
| What do clinical psychologists in community mental health teams consider when they decide between an online and an in-person intervention? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis |
A good research question in nursing and midwifery comes from practice and is specific about the patient group, the setting and the outcome. Many undergraduate dissertations are literature reviews carried out systematically; others use clinical audit, surveys or qualitative interviews with staff, patients, women and families.
For questions about the effect of an intervention, PICO (population, intervention, comparison, outcome) structures both the question and the search strategy; for questions about experience, PEO (population, exposure, outcome) or SPIDER fit better, because there is no intervention to compare. A review carried out systematically reports its search and selection in a PRISMA flow diagram and appraises each included study with a recognised tool, such as a CASP checklist or a risk of bias instrument, before any synthesis. What you can conclude depends on the designs you find: a handful of small qualitative studies cannot tell you whether an intervention works. If you collect data from patients or staff, ethical approval and access to the site belong in the plan from the start.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| In older adults on acute medical wards (P), does intentional rounding (I), compared with usual care (C), reduce inpatient falls (O)? | Evaluative | Systematic literature review of controlled studies (PICO) |
| How do newly qualified nurses in Irish acute hospitals experience their first six months of practice? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis |
| How do women describe continuity of midwifery care during pregnancy in a regional maternity unit? | Exploratory | Interviews with women after birth, thematic analysis |
| In adults with an indwelling urinary catheter (P), does a nurse-led removal protocol (I), compared with standard practice (C), reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infection (O)? | Evaluative | Systematic review of intervention studies with risk of bias assessment |
| To what extent does the recording of pressure ulcer risk assessments on two medical wards in a Dublin hospital meet the hospital's own policy? | Evaluative | Clinical audit of nursing records |
| What do public health nurses in rural County Kerry identify as barriers to early breastfeeding support? | Exploratory | Focus groups with public health nurses |
| Is moral distress associated with intention to leave among nurses working in Irish emergency departments? | Explanatory | Cross-sectional survey with validated scales, regression analysis |
| What does the research literature report about fathers' experiences when their baby is admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit? | Exploratory | Systematic review of qualitative studies (PEO or SPIDER), thematic synthesis |
| Do intellectual disability nurses and general nurses differ in their confidence in caring for adults with an intellectual disability in acute hospitals? | Comparative | Survey with a validated confidence scale, group comparison |
| How do nurses on surgical wards use the national early warning score when they escalate care for a deteriorating patient? | Descriptive | Observation and review of observation charts |
| In children undergoing venepuncture (P), does distraction with virtual reality (I), compared with standard care (C), reduce procedural pain and distress (O)? | Evaluative | Systematic review, with meta-analysis if the studies allow it |
| How can a discharge leaflet for day-case surgery patients be designed so that patients with low health literacy can follow it? | Design-oriented | Co-design with patients, readability testing and cognitive interviews |
| How do nurses recruited from overseas describe adapting to practice in Irish nursing homes? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis |
| Do rates of perineal trauma differ between births in a midwife-led unit and comparable low-risk births in a consultant-led unit? | Comparative | Retrospective analysis of birth records, adjusted for parity |
| Which non-pharmacological interventions for agitation in people with dementia in residential care have been tested in randomised trials? | Descriptive | Scoping review of trials |
| How do student nurses in the internship year describe the support they receive from preceptors? | Exploratory | Interviews or focus groups |
| Should family members be offered the option to be present during adult resuscitation in emergency departments? | Normative | Literature review with ethical analysis |
| To what extent do staff on a paediatric ward comply with the WHO five moments for hand hygiene? | Evaluative | Direct observation audit |
| Which factors are associated with missed nursing care on night shifts in medical wards, as reported by nurses? | Explanatory | Cross-sectional survey with a validated missed care instrument |
| How do community mental health nurses support people with severe mental illness who want to stop smoking? | Descriptive | Interviews and review of care plans |
Business questions work best when they are tied to a sector, a type of organisation or a market, and often to a decision someone has to make. Typical methods are surveys of customers or employees, interviews with managers, case studies and analysis of financial or other secondary data.
Name the unit of analysis first: an individual consumer, a team, a firm or a sector, because a survey of employees cannot answer a question about firm strategy. Explanatory questions rest on a theory, such as the resource-based view, the theory of planned behaviour or institutional theory, and on constructs measured with established scales. A case study needs a rationale for case selection: a typical, extreme or contrasting case, chosen for what it can show about the theory rather than for convenience of access. Questions about performance need a performance measure defined in advance and, if you claim an effect, a comparison that rules out the obvious alternative explanations.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| Which factors do owners of family businesses in County Galway weigh when they plan succession to the next generation? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews with owners |
| Is perceived flexibility in remote working associated with intention to stay among employees of technology multinationals in Dublin? | Explanatory | Survey with established scales, regression analysis |
| How do Irish agri-food SMEs respond when larger customers ask them for environmental data? | Descriptive | Interviews and document analysis |
| Do Irish-owned and foreign-owned manufacturing firms in Cork differ in how they recruit graduates? | Comparative | Interviews with HR managers in both groups, document analysis |
| To what extent did a four-day week in a small Irish software company meet the goals its management set for it? | Evaluative | Case study with interviews and workload data before and after |
| What explains whether independent retailers in Irish market towns start selling online? | Explanatory | Multiple case study, cross-case analysis |
| How can a price for a new subscription service at a coffee roaster in Kilkenny be set, given costs and competitor prices? | Design-oriented | Cost analysis, competitor analysis and customer survey |
| How do Irish employers explain their gender pay gap in the reports they publish? | Descriptive | Content analysis of published gender pay gap reports |
| Is trust in online reviews associated with booking intention for hotels on the west coast among domestic tourists? | Explanatory | Online survey, structural equation modelling |
| How do managers in Irish credit unions describe the trade-off between member service and digital change? | Exploratory | Interviews with managers |
| Did the share price reaction to profit warnings by Irish-listed companies differ before and after 2020? | Comparative | Event study using share price data |
| To what extent does the induction programme of a contact centre in Limerick meet the expectations of new starters in their first three months? | Evaluative | Survey and interviews with new starters |
| How should a small Irish food producer rank export markets after Brexit, using defined criteria for cost, demand and market access? | Normative | Market screening with weighted criteria and interviews |
| What motivates consumers in Ireland to buy second-hand clothing online? | Exploratory | Focus groups and interviews |
| Is board gender diversity associated with the quality of sustainability disclosure among companies listed in Dublin? | Explanatory | Panel data analysis of annual reports |
| How do staff in a regional hospital group perceive the fairness of the performance review process? | Descriptive | Survey with an organisational justice scale |
| Which figures does the owner of an engineering SME in Sligo need each month to follow the margin on each order? | Design-oriented | Interviews, analysis of accounting data and a dashboard prototype |
| How did hospitality businesses in Dublin change their staffing after the pandemic, according to owners and managers? | Descriptive | Interviews with owners and managers |
| Do loyalty app users of an Irish online grocery service spend more per order than comparable non-users, after controlling for order frequency? | Comparative | Analysis of anonymised transaction data with a matched comparison group |
| Is it worthwhile for an Irish SME that is not legally required to report on sustainability to adopt a voluntary reporting standard? | Normative | Cost-benefit analysis, interviews and document analysis |
A good research question in education is anchored in a classroom, a school or a policy, and in a specific group of pupils or teachers. Many B.Ed. and PME research projects use practitioner or action research with observation, pupil work, interviews and short surveys; others analyse curriculum documents or existing data.
In action research the question concerns your own practice, so it needs a clear cycle of planning, acting, observing and reflecting, and an honest account of your double role as teacher and researcher. Claims about learning need a defined measure and, ideally, a comparison: one class taught with a new approach for three weeks shows what happened, not what the approach caused. Research with children usually needs parental consent, the child's assent and the school's permission; check what your institution requires. When a question concerns policy, such as Junior Cycle reform or supports for DEIS schools, read the policy as a text with aims, assumptions and evidence, and keep your evaluation separate from your description.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How do teachers in two DEIS primary schools in Limerick city use station teaching to support literacy in first and second class? | Descriptive | Observation and teacher interviews |
| Do fifth class pupils taught with six weeks of explicit vocabulary instruction show larger gains in reading comprehension than pupils in a parallel class, with starting level checked? | Evaluative | Quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and comparison class |
| How do Junior Cycle English teachers describe planning and assessing Classroom-Based Assessments? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews with teachers |
| Do pupils in Gaelscoileanna and English-medium schools differ in their attitudes to Irish at the end of primary school? | Comparative | Survey with an attitude scale in both school types |
| How can my questioning during maths lessons in third class be changed so that pupils explain their reasoning more often? | Design-oriented | Action research over two cycles, lesson recordings and reflective journal |
| How does the Aistear framework shape play-based learning in junior infants classrooms in County Wexford? | Descriptive | Classroom observation and teacher interviews |
| What do Transition Year students say they value about work experience placements? | Exploratory | Focus groups with students |
| Is attendance at a homework club associated with homework completion among first-year students in a DEIS post-primary school? | Explanatory | Analysis of school records and a short survey |
| How do special needs assistants and class teachers divide responsibilities for pupils with additional needs in mainstream primary classrooms? | Descriptive | Interviews with SNAs and teachers |
| Should post-primary schools ban mobile phones for the whole school day, weighing evidence on learning, wellbeing and pupils' rights? | Normative | Literature review and policy analysis |
| How do newly qualified teachers experience induction in their first year in post-primary schools? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews |
| Do sixth class pupils who use peer assessment against success criteria show larger gains in persuasive writing than pupils in a parallel class with teacher feedback only, with starting level checked? | Evaluative | Quasi-experimental design across two classes, writing samples rated against a rubric |
| How is the Leaving Certificate Applied presented to students and parents by post-primary schools in the north-west? | Descriptive | Document analysis of school materials and interviews |
| What explains whether teachers of Junior Cycle science use or avoid digital assessment tools? | Explanatory | Survey followed by interviews, mixed methods |
| How do Traveller parents describe their relationship with their children's primary school? | Exploratory | Interviews with parents |
| How can differentiated reading tasks be designed for a multi-class classroom in a rural two-teacher school? | Design-oriented | Design-based research with classroom trial and pupil feedback |
| To what extent do the texts in Junior Cycle English textbooks reflect the cultural diversity of Irish classrooms? | Evaluative | Content analysis of textbooks |
| Do first-year pupils in mixed-ability and set maths classes differ in maths self-concept by the end of the year, controlling for prior attainment? | Comparative | Survey with a validated self-concept scale |
| What do student teachers on school placement report as their main sources of stress? | Descriptive | Survey with open questions and follow-up interviews |
| Is the allocation of special education teaching hours in a sample of primary schools consistent with the needs-based model in national guidance? | Evaluative | Document analysis and interviews with principals |
Social care and social work questions usually name a service, a group of people and a specific aspect of practice or experience. Common approaches are qualitative interviews and focus groups with practitioners or people who use services, analysis of policy and case documents, and small surveys.
Research in this field involves vulnerable people, so ethical approval, informed consent and the limits of confidentiality are part of the design from day one. Be explicit about whose perspective the question captures, since practitioners, managers and people who use a service will describe it differently. Qualitative work calls for reflexivity, particularly if you have worked or been on placement in the service you are studying. Questions about the outcomes of an intervention need comparable outcome data, which small services rarely hold; questions about experience, process and implementation are often more answerable.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How do young people leaving residential care in Dublin experience aftercare planning? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews with care leavers |
| What difficulties do social care workers in disability services describe in supporting adults to make their own decisions under the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015? | Exploratory | Interviews with social care workers |
| How do family support workers in family resource centres in County Mayo engage fathers? | Descriptive | Interviews and review of service documents |
| Do social workers in child protection and in adult mental health services differ in reported secondary traumatic stress? | Comparative | Survey with a validated secondary traumatic stress scale |
| To what extent does a peer mentoring programme in a youth project in Waterford meet the aims in its own programme plan? | Evaluative | Document analysis and interviews with mentors, mentees and staff |
| How are the views of children recorded in child-in-care reviews, in a sample of anonymised review documents? | Descriptive | Documentary analysis with agency permission |
| What explains the low uptake of a supported employment service among autistic adults in a regional town, according to staff and potential participants? | Explanatory | Interviews and analysis of referral data |
| How do parents living in emergency homeless accommodation in Dublin describe their children's school routines and attendance? | Exploratory | Interviews with parents |
| Should social care practitioners keep in contact with young people through social media after they leave a residential centre? | Normative | Analysis of professional codes and literature, practitioner focus groups |
| How do Traveller women describe their contact with public health and family support services after the birth of a child? | Exploratory | Interviews, with a community organisation as gatekeeper |
| How can an intake form for a domestic violence outreach service be redesigned so that it captures coercive control without retraumatising the person? | Design-oriented | Literature review, staff consultation and review by a survivor advisory group |
| How do residents of an international protection accommodation centre in the south-east describe their access to community supports? | Exploratory | Interviews, with interpreters where needed |
| Is the number of placements a child has had associated with school attendance among children in foster care, in an anonymised agency dataset? | Explanatory | Secondary analysis of anonymised administrative data |
| How do hospital social workers make decisions about discharge to nursing home care for older adults? | Descriptive | Interviews and case file analysis |
| Do social care students and qualified practitioners differ in their attitudes to restrictive practices in residential settings? | Comparative | Survey with an attitude measure |
| What do practitioners in addiction services in Cork see as the strengths and limits of a harm reduction approach? | Exploratory | Focus groups with practitioners |
| To what extent does supervision in a children's residential service match the model of reflective supervision in the practice literature? | Evaluative | Interviews with staff and supervisors, document analysis |
| How do older people living alone in rural County Leitrim use informal and formal supports? | Descriptive | Interviews with ecomaps |
| How can a transition plan for young adults with an intellectual disability moving from school to adult day services be designed together with families? | Design-oriented | Participatory workshops with families and staff |
| Should the views of the child carry more weight in access disputes, from the children's rights perspective of Article 42A of the Constitution? | Normative | Analysis of Article 42A, legislation and literature |
A good research question in computer science states the problem, the context and the criteria an answer will be judged on. Final year projects usually combine a build with an evaluation: requirements analysis, a prototype or system, then benchmarks, experiments or user testing.
In design-oriented work the question is answered by the evaluation, not by the build itself, so fix functional and non-functional requirements, such as latency, accuracy, accessibility or security, before implementation and say how each will be measured. Keep verification (did we build the system right, against its specification) apart from validation (did we build the right system, for its users). For machine learning projects, the question should name the dataset, the baseline and the metric, and the test data must stay separate from anything used for training or tuning. User studies need a defined task, a stated number of participants and an established instrument, such as the System Usability Scale, rather than general impressions.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How can a mobile app for recording home visits be designed so that community nurses in rural areas can work offline and synchronise securely later? | Design-oriented | Requirements analysis, prototype and usability test |
| Does a fine-tuned multilingual transformer classify the sentiment of social media posts in Irish more accurately than a lexicon-based baseline? | Comparative | Experiment on a labelled dataset with a held-out test set |
| To what extent do the websites of ten Irish local authorities meet WCAG 2.1 at level AA? | Evaluative | Automated and manual accessibility audit |
| Which of three open-source monitoring tools best meets the requirements of a small web hosting company in Galway? | Comparative | Benchmark in a test environment against defined criteria |
| Why do the nightly database backups of a logistics company occasionally fail? | Explanatory | Log analysis and interviews with system administrators |
| How do developers in Irish software SMEs use AI code assistants in their daily work? | Descriptive | Survey and follow-up interviews |
| Which architecture allows stock levels across five shops of a retail chain to be synchronised in near real time within a stated cost per shop per month? | Design-oriented | Proof of concept and load testing |
| Does a convolutional neural network trained on images of Irish roads detect potholes in wet conditions with precision and recall above a threshold set before testing? | Evaluative | Experiment with a held-out test set, precision and recall by condition |
| Which security weaknesses exist in the network of a small general practice, and how serious are they? | Evaluative | Vulnerability scan and risk assessment with the practice's permission |
| How should the retention of CCTV footage by a car park operator be configured to comply with the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018? | Normative | Analysis of legal requirements and the current configuration |
| Does a low-code platform or a custom web application involve less maintenance effort for an internal request workflow in a county council? | Comparative | Two prototypes compared on predefined criteria |
| What stops staff at an engineering consultancy in Cork from enabling multi-factor authentication? | Explanatory | Survey and interviews with staff |
| Which data should a dashboard show so that a production manager in a medical device plant in Athlone can follow machine downtime? | Design-oriented | Interviews, data exploration and prototype with user testing |
| How do teachers of Leaving Certificate Computer Science use automated feedback tools for programming tasks? | Descriptive | Interviews and analysis of tool usage logs |
| Does edge caching reduce page load time for users of a ticketing website at peak demand, compared with the current setup? | Evaluative | Controlled load tests in a staging environment |
| What do customers of an energy supplier ask its support chatbot, and which requests does it fail to resolve? | Exploratory | Analysis of anonymised chat logs |
| Is code review turnaround time associated with the number of defects reported after release in an open-source project? | Explanatory | Mining of software repositories, regression analysis |
| How can a speech-to-text pipeline be adapted to Irish English accents in lecture recordings, and how far does the word error rate fall? | Design-oriented | Adaptation experiment, word error rate on a held-out set |
| Which rules should govern the use of generative AI tools by developers in a small software company? | Normative | Literature review and interviews with developers |
| How do users with a visual impairment experience the online booking system of a regional bus service? | Exploratory | Think-aloud sessions with screen reader users |
In engineering, the research question states the system or component, the operating conditions and the performance criteria. Typical methods are laboratory testing, numerical modelling and simulation, field measurement and design studies, often in combination.
Engineering questions are answered against requirements and constraints, so state the performance criteria and the relevant standards, for example the Eurocodes or the building regulations, before you design or test. Show that a numerical model is solved correctly, through mesh or time-step convergence, and that it represents reality, through comparison with measurements or published data. Report the uncertainty in your measurements and the assumptions behind boundary conditions, since both limit what you can claim. When you compare design options, fix the decision criteria and their weights before you see the results.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How much does external wall insulation reduce the heat loss of a 1970s semi-detached house in Dublin, measured before and after retrofit? | Evaluative | Field measurement with weather-corrected energy data |
| Does a ground-source or an air-to-water heat pump achieve the better seasonal performance in a rural house in County Monaghan? | Comparative | Dynamic building energy simulation checked against metered data |
| How does the compressive strength of concrete with 30% ground granulated blast-furnace slag develop over 90 days compared with a standard mix? | Comparative | Laboratory testing of cube specimens |
| Why does a flood defence at a river crossing in a Cork suburb overtop during events below its design return period? | Explanatory | Hydraulic modelling calibrated with gauge data |
| How can a low-cost sensor system for monitoring moisture in timber frame walls be designed and validated? | Design-oriented | Prototype, laboratory calibration and field trial |
| What fatigue life can be expected for a welded steel connection in a footbridge under measured pedestrian loading? | Evaluative | Strain gauge measurement and fatigue assessment to the Eurocodes |
| Is wind speed at hub height associated with gearbox fault alarms at an onshore wind farm in County Kerry? | Explanatory | Analysis of SCADA data, statistical modelling |
| How do traffic volumes and speeds on a regional road through a midlands village change after a traffic calming scheme, compared with a similar road without one? | Evaluative | Before-and-after traffic counts with a control site |
| Which surfacing material best meets cost, durability and noise criteria for an urban road resurfacing scheme in Galway? | Normative | Multi-criteria analysis with weights fixed in advance |
| How does the treatment performance of a constructed wetland serving a rural housing cluster vary by season? | Descriptive | Monthly sampling and laboratory analysis |
| Does adding recycled plastic fibres increase the flexural toughness of concrete compared with a plain mix? | Explanatory | Laboratory experiment with replicated specimens |
| How can the layout of a small anaerobic digestion plant on a dairy farm be designed to meet safety and odour requirements? | Design-oriented | Design study with mass balance and hazard analysis |
| How accurately does a finite element model predict the measured deflection of a cross-laminated timber floor? | Evaluative | Finite element modelling validated against site measurements |
| What do site managers see as the main causes of delay on residential construction projects in the greater Dublin area? | Exploratory | Survey and interviews with site managers |
| How do winter peak electricity demand profiles differ between homes with and without solar PV and batteries? | Comparative | Analysis of smart meter data from two groups |
| How can a heat pump control strategy be designed to shift consumption to off-peak hours without loss of thermal comfort? | Design-oriented | Simulation and controller testing |
| What is the current condition of masonry arch bridges on local roads in County Clare? | Descriptive | Visual inspection with a standard condition rating |
| Is the fall in output of a solar PV array on a school roof explained by soiling, shading or module degradation? | Explanatory | Performance data analysis and I-V curve testing |
| Should an exposed coastal road on the Atlantic coast be protected with rock armour or realigned inland, given cost, risk and environmental criteria? | Normative | Multi-criteria analysis with coastal modelling |
| Does a 3D-printed lattice bracket meet the stiffness requirement of the original machined part at a lower mass? | Evaluative | Design, finite element analysis and mechanical testing |
Historians expect a question that ties a defined period and place to a body of sources you can actually consult. Common approaches are archival research, newspaper analysis, oral history, prosopography and close reading of printed and official sources.
A historical question starts from historiography: what historians have argued, and where that debate leaves something unresolved or untested. Define the period and place, and treat present-day concepts as analytical terms you define yourself, not as categories the people of the time used. Source criticism belongs in the design of the question: who produced a witness statement or a newspaper report, for whom and with what interest, and what the archive does not contain. A 'why' question needs more than a chronology; it needs an argument that weighs competing explanations against the evidence.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How did local relief committees in County Clare distribute food during the Great Famine, and does this support or qualify the view that relief was slow and uneven? | Descriptive | Archival research in relief commission papers |
| How did nationalist and unionist newspapers in Dublin and Belfast report the 1913 Lockout? | Comparative | Analysis of historical newspapers |
| Why did some Irish Volunteers in County Cork take the anti-Treaty side in 1922 while their neighbours accepted the Treaty? | Explanatory | Prosopography using witness statements and pension files |
| How do witness statements in the Bureau of Military History describe women's role in the War of Independence in Munster, and do they qualify the view that it was marginal? | Descriptive | Analysis of witness statements with source criticism |
| How did Dáil debates on the censorship of publications change between 1929 and 1967? | Descriptive | Analysis of parliamentary debates |
| To what extent did the Shannon Scheme deliver the economic aims that the Free State government set for it? | Evaluative | Archival research and contemporary reports |
| How did emigrants from County Mayo to England in the 1950s explain their reasons for leaving? | Exploratory | Existing oral history recordings and letters |
| How did the Catholic hierarchy respond to the Mother and Child Scheme of 1951, according to published and archival correspondence? | Descriptive | Analysis of correspondence and the press |
| Did the experience of Civil War internment in 1922 and 1923 differ between men and women, according to prison records and memoirs? | Comparative | Prison records and memoirs with source criticism |
| Why were certain Dublin streets so much more overcrowded than others in the 1911 census? | Explanatory | Census returns and municipal records, spatial analysis |
| How were the Magdalene laundries represented in Irish newspapers between 1950 and 1996, and does this support the argument that their workings were publicly known? | Descriptive | Newspaper analysis |
| Was the Economic War of the 1930s a turning point for cattle farmers in the midlands, as some historians argue? | Evaluative | Agricultural statistics and local newspapers tested against the historiography |
| How can a walking trail on the 1798 rebellion in Wexford town be designed so that its panels reflect current historiography? | Design-oriented | Historiographical review and public history design |
| Should a county museum present objects linked to the Royal Irish Constabulary in the same way as objects linked to the IRA in a War of Independence exhibition? | Normative | Museum ethics literature and analysis of exhibitions |
| What does the correspondence of a landed estate in County Roscommon reveal about evictions in the 1880s? | Exploratory | Analysis of estate papers |
| How did Irish diplomats present neutrality during the Second World War (the Emergency) in their reports to Dublin, and does this support the view that neutrality was pragmatic rather than principled? | Descriptive | Analysis of published diplomatic documents |
| How did women describe factory work in the glass industry in Waterford between 1950 and 1980? | Exploratory | Oral history interviews |
| Why did the Boundary Commission of 1924 to 1925 leave the border unchanged? | Explanatory | Archival research and the historiography |
| How did mortality in the 1918 influenza pandemic in Dublin compare with Belfast? | Comparative | Analysis of registrar returns and the press |
| Did inspectors' reports on national schools in Connacht in the 1880s reflect the aims of the payment by results system? | Evaluative | Inspectors' reports analysed against the system's stated aims |
In English studies, the research question defines a corpus: a set of texts, an author, a linguistic feature or a group of speakers. Literary projects use close reading within a theoretical frame; linguistics projects use corpus analysis, sociolinguistic interviews, surveys and experiments.
In literature the question is interpretive: you read a defined set of texts through a stated frame, such as narratology, postcolonial theory or ecocriticism, and every claim has to rest on textual evidence and on dialogue with the existing criticism. In linguistics the question is empirical, so it needs a defined variable, a sample of speakers or texts and a method of analysis that someone else could repeat. Irish English is a good example: a question about the 'after' perfect ('I'm after eating') needs a corpus or an elicitation task, not intuition. Questions about translation or adaptation need explicit criteria for comparing source and target.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How does James Joyce use free indirect discourse to represent paralysis in three stories from Dubliners? | Descriptive | Close reading with narratological analysis |
| How do Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September and Kate O'Brien's The Land of Spices represent the Big House and the convent as spaces of authority? | Comparative | Comparative close reading |
| Is use of the 'after' perfect associated with speaker age among adults in County Galway? | Explanatory | Elicitation task with speakers in three age groups |
| How did Irish newspaper reviewers receive Brian Friel's Translations in its first two years on stage? | Descriptive | Reception study of reviews |
| How do Seamus Heaney's bog poems connect the Irish bog with violence and memory? | Descriptive | Close reading within memory studies |
| Do Irish teenagers understand a plain-language version of a public health leaflet better than the original? | Explanatory | Experiment with two versions and comprehension questions |
| How can a reading guide on Translations be designed to help Leaving Certificate students read its treatment of language critically? | Design-oriented | Design and classroom trial of materials |
| Which features of Irish English appear in the dialogue of John McGahern's Amongst Women, and what do they do for characterisation? | Descriptive | Stylistic analysis |
| Should student editions of nineteenth-century Irish novels modernise spelling and dialect forms? | Normative | Analysis of editorial theory and existing editions |
| Do young people in Dublin and Cork differ in their use of quotative 'like'? | Comparative | Sociolinguistic interviews and variable analysis |
| To what extent do the English subtitles of an Irish-language drama series convey the humour of the original? | Evaluative | Source and target text comparison with a translation framework |
| How and why do Irish students switch between Irish and English on social media? | Exploratory | Analysis of posts and interviews |
| How does Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent use its narrator to comment on the Anglo-Irish landlord class? | Descriptive | Close reading with narratological analysis |
| How do Patrick Kavanagh's The Great Hunger and Eavan Boland's poems of the 1980s differ in their representation of rural women? | Comparative | Comparative close reading with feminist criticism |
| What attitudes do post-primary English teachers in Leinster hold towards Irish English features in students' written work? | Exploratory | Survey with attitude items and interviews |
| Has the frequency of 'amn't' in Irish newspaper English changed between 1990 and 2020? | Descriptive | Corpus analysis of newspaper archives |
| How do the revisions W. B. Yeats made to his early poems for later collected editions alter their treatment of Irish myth? | Descriptive | Comparison of versions using a variorum edition |
| How is the collapse of the Celtic Tiger represented in Irish novels published between 2008 and 2015? | Descriptive | Close reading of a defined corpus of novels |
| Is reading for pleasure at age 13 associated with vocabulary at age 17 in Irish longitudinal survey data? | Explanatory | Secondary analysis of longitudinal data with controls |
| To what extent do the glossaries in student editions of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World explain Irish English forms accurately? | Evaluative | Comparison of glossaries with dictionary and corpus evidence |
Health research questions specify the population, the exposure or intervention, the comparison, the outcome and the setting. Typical designs for student projects are clinical audits, retrospective chart reviews, cross-sectional surveys, systematic reviews and analysis of existing cohort data.
Match the design to the question: incidence and prognosis need cohort data, effectiveness needs a randomised or carefully controlled comparison, and cross-sectional data can show prevalence and association but not which came first. Confounding, selection bias and information bias are the threats an examiner will look for, so the question should already make clear which confounders you will measure. A systematic review follows a protocol fixed in advance, reports its flow with PRISMA, assesses risk of bias, for example with RoB 2 for trials or ROBINS-I for non-randomised studies, and rates the certainty of evidence with GRADE where appropriate. An audit question compares practice against a named standard, while a research question aims at new knowledge.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| What proportion of adults with type 2 diabetes in a general practice in County Tipperary had an annual foot examination recorded in 2025? | Descriptive | Retrospective chart review |
| Is living in a rural area associated with later-stage diagnosis of colorectal cancer among patients treated at a regional cancer centre? | Explanatory | Retrospective cohort study adjusted for age and deprivation |
| In adults with acute low back pain (P), does early referral to physiotherapy (I), compared with usual GP care (C), reduce days off work (O)? | Evaluative | Systematic review of randomised trials with RoB 2 |
| Does antibiotic prescribing for respiratory tract infections in an out-of-hours GP service follow national prescribing guidance? | Evaluative | Clinical audit against national guidance |
| Do hip fracture patients over 75 who reach surgery within 48 hours have lower 30-day mortality than those operated on later in a regional orthopaedic unit? | Comparative | Retrospective cohort analysis adjusted for confounders |
| How do adults with several chronic conditions describe coordinating appointments between hospital and primary care services? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis |
| What is the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among nursing home residents in the north-west, according to routine blood test data? | Descriptive | Cross-sectional analysis of laboratory data |
| Did alcohol-related emergency presentations at an urban hospital change after minimum unit pricing of alcohol was introduced? | Evaluative | Interrupted time series analysis of presentation data |
| Which factors are associated with HPV vaccine uptake among first-year post-primary students in one HSE area? | Explanatory | Analysis of anonymised vaccination records and area-level deprivation |
| How do medical students describe their preparation for breaking bad news before their first clinical placement? | Exploratory | Focus groups with students |
| Should doctors tell patients when an AI tool contributed to a diagnostic decision, from the perspective of medical ethics and informed consent? | Normative | Ethical and legal analysis |
| Do outcomes for patients with sepsis differ between hospitals using an electronic early warning system and hospitals using paper charts? | Comparative | Retrospective analysis adjusted for case mix |
| How can a discharge checklist for older patients on several medicines be designed to reduce medication errors on transfer to a nursing home? | Design-oriented | Literature review, design with pharmacists and nurses, pilot testing |
| Is physical activity in midlife associated with cognitive function ten years later in a national longitudinal study of ageing? | Explanatory | Secondary analysis of cohort data adjusted for confounders |
| Does a text message reminder reduce missed appointments at a hospital diabetes outpatient clinic compared with no reminder? | Evaluative | Randomised controlled trial |
| What are the patterns of emergency department attendance by people experiencing homelessness in Dublin over one year? | Descriptive | Analysis of anonymised attendance records |
| How do GPs in rural practices decide whether to refer a patient with suspected transient ischaemic attack urgently? | Exploratory | Interviews with GPs, thematic analysis |
| Which outcome measures have trials of exercise rehabilitation after stroke used, and how consistently? | Descriptive | Scoping review following a published framework |
| Is waiting time for elective hip replacement associated with function at the time of surgery among patients of a regional hospital? | Explanatory | Retrospective cohort with a validated function measure |
| To what extent does the recording of advance care planning discussions on a palliative care ward follow the hospital's policy? | Evaluative | Clinical audit of records |
Questions in sociology and politics name a social group or political actor, a place and time, and the pattern or mechanism you want to understand. Common methods are surveys and secondary analysis of existing datasets, qualitative interviews, comparative case studies, and content or discourse analysis of media and political texts.
Connect the question to a theory or debate, for instance on social class, citizenship or party competition, because theory tells you which concepts to operationalise and what a surprising answer would look like. In comparative work, case selection carries much of the weight: choose cases on a stated logic, such as most similar or most different systems, and be wary of selecting only cases where the outcome occurred. Secondary analysis of census data or a cross-national survey is often more feasible than collecting your own sample, but the question then has to fit the variables that exist. With aggregate data, such as results by constituency, avoid drawing conclusions about individual voters. Qualitative questions about meaning and experience call for purposive sampling and reflexivity, not claims of representativeness.
| Research question | Type | Method that fits |
|---|---|---|
| How do young renters in Dublin describe the part housing costs play in their plans to start a family? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews |
| Is the share of graduates in a constituency associated with the Yes vote in the 2015 marriage equality referendum? | Explanatory | Analysis of referendum and census data at constituency level |
| How did Irish newspapers frame the 2018 referendum on the Eighth Amendment in the final month of the campaign? | Descriptive | Framing analysis of newspaper coverage |
| Do vote transfer patterns under PR-STV in general elections differ between urban and rural constituencies? | Comparative | Analysis of count data across constituencies |
| Why did turnout in the 2024 local elections vary between local electoral areas in Cork? | Explanatory | Analysis of turnout and census small area data |
| How do former members of a citizens' assembly describe the influence of expert presentations on their views? | Exploratory | Interviews with former members |
| How do young Travellers experience the state's recognition of Traveller ethnicity in their everyday lives? | Exploratory | Interviews, with a Traveller organisation as gatekeeper |
| To what extent has the candidate gender quota changed the share of women candidates selected by parties for general elections? | Evaluative | Candidate data before and after the quota, compared with local elections |
| How do a local authority in Ireland and a municipality in Denmark differ in how they involve residents in climate action planning? | Comparative | Comparative case study of two councils |
| Should Ireland lower the voting age to 16 for general elections, judged against arguments about representation and political maturity? | Normative | Normative political theory and evidence from countries that did so |
| How did Irish ministers present the border in their speeches on Brexit between 2016 and 2020? | Descriptive | Discourse analysis of speeches |
| Is remote working associated with membership of local community organisations among residents of towns in the north-west? | Explanatory | Survey of residents, regression analysis |
| How do international protection applicants in accommodation centres in rural towns describe their relations with local residents? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews |
| How have attitudes to immigration in Ireland changed across recent rounds of the European Social Survey? | Descriptive | Secondary analysis of repeated cross-sectional data |
| How can a consultation on a new cycle route in a Galway neighbourhood be designed to reach residents who rarely take part? | Design-oriented | Literature review, stakeholder interviews and a pilot consultation |
| Did newspapers in Dublin and Belfast differ in how they covered the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022? | Comparative | Content analysis of newspaper coverage |
| What explains the electoral success of independent candidates in some rural constituencies but not in others? | Explanatory | Comparative analysis of constituencies with and without independent seats |
| How has the official definition of homelessness been used in public debate on housing? | Exploratory | Document and media analysis |
| To what extent does a participatory budgeting pilot in an Irish local authority reach residents of disadvantaged areas? | Evaluative | Analysis of participation data and interviews |
| How does social class shape parents' choice between fee-paying and non-fee-paying secondary schools in south Dublin? | Exploratory | Semi-structured interviews with parents |
Still choosing a topic? Read how to choose a dissertation topic. Writing a proposal first? See research proposal feedback.
Once you have a draft, the more useful test is whether the text answers the question you set. Esmond takes the question as agreed with your supervisor and reads whether your method, findings and conclusion respond to it, with comments at the passages where the argument loses its thread. It does not judge whether the question itself is a good one. More on how that works: research question feedback.
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I would advise against it. They are fictional and show how a question is reasoned through. Your own question starts from your own topic and is agreed with your supervisor.
SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. It comes from project management and is a useful checklist for aims and objectives. For a research question, supervisors usually look more closely at whether it is bounded, researchable and built on terms you can define.
A clinical question built from population, intervention, comparison and outcome. It is standard in nursing, medicine and the health sciences for questions about whether an intervention works. For questions about experience, PEO or SPIDER fit better. See the nursing and medicine examples above.
A research question states what you want to find out. A hypothesis is an expected answer that you test, usually in quantitative research, and it should be stated before you collect data. Qualitative research often works without a hypothesis.
An aim states what the project sets out to do, such as to examine or to compare; a research question states what you want to know. Many Irish programmes ask for both, together with objectives that break the aim into steps. Check your module handbook for what your programme expects.
There is no fixed number. Each sub-question should be a step towards answering the main question, and each should be answered somewhere in the dissertation. Ask your supervisor what is usual in your programme.
Choose the programme closest to yours in method. A sport science project often sits near psychology or health sciences; economics near business or sociology.
No. Judging the question is for your supervisor. Esmond reads whether your dissertation answers the question you set, and points to the passages where it drifts.
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