Research is a significant component for establishing or deriving meaningful strategies to aid in understanding an issue from a theoretical and practical point of view. By asserting testable theories, one can determine the background and state the problem at hand by identifying the study’s specific objectives. A research question is usually based on a researcher’s goals and what they aim to establish or derive by the end of their study. Conversely, queries that guide the literature review are based on key terms or keywords from already established previous studies. Alongside outlining two viewpoints guiding research questions, this paper aims to compare and contrast those approaches in the scientific and quantitative design context.
A researcher can formulate a null and alternate hypothesis through a question and establish whether to reject the null hypothesis using the scientific method (Thuan et al., 2020). For an inquiry to be valid, it has to be derived from specific objectives. For instance, if one wants to establish how to create a buffer zone for bicultural children in the healthcare setting. The speculation would ask for the current state or level of policy formulations, factors that are affecting those strategies, and the best methods that could aid in improving the situation. As an illustration from casual observation, one might claim that having the best health care insurance policy guarantees one a good and prolonged healthy life. A PICOT may be viable to assess the validity and soundness of the argument (Armstrong et al., 2018). Hence, such an examination establishes the background and foreground information to enhance the questions’ framing.
The testing of a hypothesis is a statistical method that establishes the likelihood of an idea being correct or incorrect (Meyer et al., 2017). The development of a null and alternative hypothesis is a necessary step in putting this hypothesis through the rigors of the scientific method. Therefore, the conjecture gives a point of reference to check if what the investigator would observe in the study differs from the void outcome; hence they can determine if such variations are due to randomness or otherwise (Meyer et al., 2017). After that, the researcher can use the alternate theory to disprove the previous assumption. If there is a statistically significant difference, this demonstrates evidence to support the idea.
On the other hand, literature review questions govern the researcher in identifying the gap in knowledge that they intend to fill with their derived information (Thuan et al., 2020). Similarly, it may be used as a platform for systematically reviewing various studies and finding what works and what does not based on evidence. A guiding research question also encompasses an already tested hypothesis and drawn conclusions and implications for that particular study. Moreover, it enables one to be selective in his quest for information, thereby picking articles that are much more conclusive with their study objectives.
There is no room to alternate the stated hypothesis for a guiding research question for the literature review. Instead, it guides the researcher to navigate the information, analyze the collected data, and affirm the conclusions drawn. Searching the literature is more effective when the researcher is clear on what they need to find, their research topic is clearly understood, and the various concepts within their topic are delineated. For a quantitative design strategy, an exploratory question would be crucial in establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between the variables and, later on, measuring the effects of those variables. In the case of guiding literature review, the questions an investigator seeks to review systematically would be answered through a correlational perspective (Bloomfield & Fisher, 2019). This design can help to recognize patterns and trends they are trying to gather.
Both methods are, therefore, valuable from both a conceptual and practical perspective. From a conceptual standpoint, the findings of the questions guided by previous studies contribute to a more significant reasoning of the factors influencing the topic. Conversely, the research questions formulated for the study will lead to better-designed, better-targeted, and more precise policy formation in the case of increasing costs of health insurance.
References
Armstrong, M. J., Mullins, C. D., Gronseth, G. S., & Gagliardi, A. R. (2018). Impact of patient involvement on clinical practice guideline development: a parallel-group study.Implementation Science, 13(1), 1-13.
Bloomfield, J., & Fisher, M. J. (2019). Quantitative research design Association.Journal of the Australasian Rehabilitation Nurses, 22(2), 27-30.
Meyer, K. E., van Witteloostuijn, A., & Beugelsdijk, S. (2017). What’s in a P? Reassessing best practices for conducting and reporting hypothesis-testing research. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(5), 535-551.
Thuan, N., Drechsler, A., & Antunes, P. (2020). Construction of design science research questions.Communications of the Association for Information Systems.