Research Question Refinement
Narrows until the question is answerable, since broad questions produce work nobody can act on.
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Running it, start to finish
- Name the decision this feeds, or acknowledge it is curiosity.
- Narrow by population, period and context until it is answerable.
- Define what would count as an answer before starting.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Establishes what decision the research informs before refining anything.
- Defines what would count as an answer, so the work has a stopping point.
- States what would disconfirm, without which the research is advocacy.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Add population, period and context. Almost every unanswerable question becomes answerable once those three are specified.
- Check it has not been answered. Much research re-derives established findings, usually with fewer resources than the original.
- Name the disconfirming evidence. If nothing would change your conclusion, you are supporting a position rather than researching a question.
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Written for The AI University. Every prompt in this library is original work — authored, tested and revised here, not collected from elsewhere. 365 of them, free with an account.