To be, or not to be: what is in a research question?

So you now spend a minimum of an hour a week wearing your shirt with a pocket protector thinking, among other things, about what you can do to speed up your training to become a scientist. Don’t know what I am talking about? Go and see my previous post and come back.(Pocket protector)
 
Ok. You are now asking questions furiously at all times of the day (and night?) trying to get a handle on how to structure a question in order to best help with finding an answer. Why? It’s all about clarity. Not sure what that is? Listen to Zedd for some instruction: Clarity – Zedd
 
A great French author Marcel Proust – yes another French author, my first name is Pascal after all – said: “The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing
with new eyes.”
Maybe by asking the right questions we can inch ever so slowly towards the truth that lies right in front of our own eyes! So take a fresh look at what and how you do all things scientific.
 
Here is what I suggest for formulating your questions:
 
Use the PICO model (for a little more detail: PICO)
 
Patient, Population, Problem
Intervention
Comparison (optional. PIO when absent!)
Outcome
 
Essentially in a clinical setting – For a patient with (Problem), how does (Intervention) compare to (Comparison) with regard to (Outcome)?
  • Is MR angiography more effective than a Doppler carotid ultrasound in diagnosing and describing carotid artery disease in obese middle-aged males and females?

or PIO – For a patient with (Problem), does (Intervention) affect (Outcome)?

  • Is a MR angiography effective in diagnosing and describing carotid artery disease in obese middle-aged males and females?
PICO can be applied to most research questions that you may have – yes even outside of Medical Imaging and in the real world (see Scientific thinking in business). 
 
Just remember that you will most probably want to formulate and test a hypothesis based on your research question. For quantitative statistical analysis you will want your question to be answerable by yes/no or a number. For qualitative analysis your question will typically start with: What is/are…? 
 
Keep practicing and we will chat about testing hypotheses next post. Stay tuned…
 
 
Pascal Tyrrell