Research question and goals

This is the landing page for topics related to objectives you aim to achieve with your intensive longitudinal study.

Your research question is the place of departure for making all kinds of decisions with respect to your study design, measurement design, analyses, and via these choices determines the conclusions you will be able to draw. It is hence a good idea to make a research question as clear and precise as possible. Then you will able to evaluate to what extent your choices will allow you to learn what you want to learn, and optimize your design for your question. Specifying your research question may take multiple iterations and refinements.

Below we have specified multiple articles that help you generate and refine your research question as well as specifying your research goals.

Think more about your research question and goals

Generating research questions

Grouding your research question in theory provides a solid foundation for answering it in a meaningful way.

Refining research questions

Refined research questions sharpen the study’s focus, aligns methods with objectives, and increases the clarity and relevance of your findings.

Specifying research goals

There exist multiple dimensions (and combinations thereof) along which research goals can be categorized which determine the optimal approach to your study.

  • [Description, prediction, and causation]
  • [Exploratory or confirmatory]
  • [Population-focused, process-focused, or both]

Noémi K. Schuurman

Last modified: 2025-04-9