Title: Research Question Quiz
Course: CJ601-01:Seminar in the Administration of Criminal Justice > Section: From Interests to Research Questions

Q: Pick one topic that interests you within CJ/Criminology. Put another way, you should consider something that most interests you within CJ/Criminology. What burning question would you like to answer within CJ/Criminology?

Example from my research interests: When I started studying sociology and psychology, I developed an interest in protests, social movements, and politics. I really wanted to answer the following question: why do some students participate in protests when others do not?

Q: What are some reasonable/intelligible answers to that question? Importantly, these answers can be ones that you've read in academic literature (journal articles or books) or common-knowledge reasons.

Example from my research interests: I found out (through reading academic articles) that protesters tended to have a lot of friends who were also protesting. The logic/argument/theory is: having higher numbers of politically-involved friends (also known as social ties) puts peer pressure on a person to go out and protest.

Q: Select one (1) of the answers you listed. Now, phrase your answer EXACTLY like this (replacing X and Y):

"X influences Y"

Example from my research interests: "social ties influence protest participation".

Q: What is the dependent (outcome, Y) variable in the phrase above?

Example from my research interests: The dependent variable is protest participation, because protest participation is dependent on (influenced by) social ties.

Q: What is the independent (predictor, X) variable in the phrase above?

Example from my research interests: The independent variable is social ties, because the number of social ties influences protest participation.

Q: Create your research question by filling in the following, EXACTLY (replacing X and Y):

"Is variation in X related to variation in Y?"

Example from my research interests: "Is variation in social ties related to variation in protest participation?" Variation is just another way of saying that the variables vary, or change. Such a question could imply that higher numbers of social ties could influence higher levels of protest participation.