Where to Start- Forming a Research Question
Your creative project is well underway and now it is time to research and write about it. But how do you turn your ideas into a research question?
Use the tabs on this page to work through Phases 1, 2, 3 and 4. These may help you identify themes and questions you would like to explore in your project, and how to turn these into successful library search strategies.
The library also has many resources available to help you learn more about Practice-Based Research and other research methodologies. There are links to these in the Research Methodologies and Key Research Texts tabs.
Phase 1- Go deep!
1) Reflect on your current creative project. Write down your motivations and aims for creating the project. Write down any significant discoveries you have made along the way.
2) Ask yourself, have there been any issues arising from the project that I could research? These issues may be based around the concept, themes or technical aspects of your work or a combination of these.
3) If you are struggling to identify any issues, talk with peers who know your work and ask them for feedback. Explain to them your motivations, aims and discoveries. Ask them if your work effectively achieves what you set out to do. Write down any issues related to your work that come from this discussion.
4) Based on the issues you and your peers have identified, select one or two issues that are the most interesting and important for you. These issues will form the basis of your research question.
Phase 2- Give yourself some structure
1) Using the 1 or 2 issues you have identified, you can narrow the focus of your research question. Here are a few questions to ask:
- Time period (Is my work related to a specific period?)
- Person (Is my work related to a specific director, composer, choreographer, performer or writer?)
- Technical tool (Does my work use any particular technique?)
- Social or political issue (Does my work address a social issue such as war, disease, love, race or sexuality?)
- Contemporary issue (Does my work explore an issue in contemporary music theatre? Eg. music, writing, performance venues, lyrics, acting or dancing)
- What kind of role does my creative project have in the broader context of contemporary music theatre?
2) Make a list of responses to these questions. Select which responses are most interesting and relevant to your creative project.
You will now have a narrower idea for your research question.
Phase 3- Writing your research question
1) Play around with your research question. Write it down as a question or statement in a number of different ways. Try to get to at least ten different statements, but no pressure! Not all of them will be good. You might:
- Change around the phrasing of the issue
- Change your original words for synonyms
- Say the question out loud
- Explain it to one of your peers and write down your explanation.
2) Highlight the questions that seem clearest to you.
3) Forget about your question or topic for 24 hours. Instead, reflect on your creative project, watch some documentation or perform part of the project.
4) Return to your list of questions with fresh eyes. Make a list of the best three questions/topic sentences. If you have already identified that one question is the best one for you, stick with that one.
Phase 4- Finalising your research question
1) For each question, spend 10 minutes searching Discovery. Use an Information Search Planner to help you search effectively (download one from the link below).
2) Assess the results of your searches as you go and use these results to help you choose one of your three questions. Ask yourself:
- Is there a lot of information available on this topic?
- Has my question already been answered?
- Who is writing about the topic of my question?
- Which of my searches is finding results that are the most interesting and relevant to my creative project?
3) By answering the questions above, you will be able to select a suitable question. If not, reassess your question and repeat Phase 2 onwards. Alternatively, you may wish to discuss your question with your lecturer or supervisor.
REMEMBER: Your question will change over time. When you are making work and researching, your ideas will change and your question can too!
- Information Search Planner Use this planner to help you identify keywords and brainstorm alternative search terms.
Research Methodologies
Research Methods
The Library collections offer many resources on research methods. Doing a simple keyword search in the Library Catalogue will give you a list of many. You can use the keywords below as a starting point:
- Practice-led research
- Practice based research
- Research-led practice
- Artistic research
You can also modify your search to limit it to resources held at Southbank Library, or to our Online Resources if you're interested in an ebook.
Subject Headings in the Catalogue
The links below will launch a search in the library catalogue for specific subject headings:
SAGE Research Methods
SAGE Research Methods is a research tool to help you design your research project. Search by keywords or use the visual interface in the Methods Map. Its main focus is research in the social sciences.
- SAGE Research MethodsSAGE Research Methods is a research methods tool which links SAGE’s renowned book, journal and reference content with truly advanced search and discovery tools. Researchers can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings. SAGE Research Methods Cases is a collection of case studies of real social research that faculty can use in their teaching. Cases are original, specially commissioned, and designed to help students understand often abstract methodological concepts by introducing them to case studies of real research projects.
Key Research Texts
Practice As Research by ISBN: 9780857715876Publication Date: 2014-06-10Practice-led research is a burgeoning area across the creative arts, with studio-based doctorates frequently favoured over traditional research. Yet until now there has been little published guidance for students embarking on such research. Designed specifically as a research training tool, the book is structured on the model used by most research programmes. A comprehensive introduction lays out the book's framework and individual chapters provide concrete examples of studio-based research in art, film and video, creative writing and dance, each contextualised by a theoretical essay and complete with references.
Artistic Research in the Future Academy by ISBN: 9781783207909Publication Date: 2017-11-15The rapid growth of doctoral-level art education challenges traditional ways of thinking about academic knowledge and, yet, as Danny Butt argues in this book, the creative arts may also represent a positive blueprint for the future of the university. Synthesizing institutional history with aesthetic theory, Artistic Research in the Future Academy reconceptualizes the contemporary crisis in university education toward a valuable renewal of creative research.
Practice As Research in the Arts by ISBN: 9781137282910Publication Date: 2013-03-03At the performance turn, this book takes a fresh 'how to' approach to Practice as Research, arguing that old prejudices should be abandoned and a PaR methodology fully accepted in the academy. Nelson and his contributors address the questions students, professional practitioner-researchers, regulators and examiners have posed in this domain.
Mapping Landscapes for Performance As Research by ISBN: 9780230222199Publication Date: 2009-07-16Although the sciences have long understood the value of practice-based research, the arts and humanities have tended to structure a gap between practice and analysis. This book examines differences and similarities between Performance as Research practices in various community and national contexts, mapping out the landscape of this new field.
How to Write a Better Minor Thesis by ISBN: 9780522866094Publication Date: 2014-07-01Senior university and college students often find themselves presented with a dramatic new challenge- the task of writing their first thesis. What is expected? What should the thesis consist of? How can the whole process be made a bit easier? How to achieve the best possible result? Working within strict time limits, and under pressure right from the start, what does the student need to do to ensure that the thesis is finished? In How to Write a Better Minor Thesis, experienced advisors Dr Paul Gruba and Professor Justin Zobel lay out step-by-step guidelines for writing a minor thesis. Based on decades of working with students undertaking their first piece of research, they take novice researchers through the process of completing a minor thesis from initial steps to final on-time submission. Written in a friendly manner, this concise book--a companion to their senior text on the challenges of research writing, How To Write A Better Thesis--will help you to successfully tackle this fresh challenge. How to Write a Better Minor Thesis contains sections of condensed material from How To Write A Better Thesis, complementing the entirely new material written for minor thesis students.
Creative Arts Research by ISBN: 9789087909956Publication Date: 2009-01-01Creative Arts Research: Narratives of Methodologies and Practices is an innovative set of essays that grows out of active engagement with arts practice, pedagogy and research. The collection presents a selection of arts-based research projects, their methodologies, practices and guiding philosophies, and throws new light on a range of issues that bring artists, designers, and performers into conversation with one another. The collection weaves together theoretical and applied dimensions of creative arts research. Following Martin Heidegger, the lead authors, Elizabeth Grierson and Laura Brearley situate the text through consideration of ways of framing, knowing and being, looking and listening, analysing, being-with, proposing, acting and reflecting, constructing, performing, deconstructing, and learning. Heidegger's notion of "gathering" and his proposition, "Questioning builds a way. . . the way is one of thinking" provides the means to link the different chapters. This wide-ranging metaphoric device allows the authors to emphasise a set of fundamental questions concerning epistemologies, ways of knowing, and ontologies, ways of being, and the relations between the two. Their book opens a conceptual space to recognise the diversity of practices that count as creative arts research.
Introduction Research Methods by ISBN: 9781845283674Publication Date: 2009-05-29This practical, down-to-earth guide is for researchers, students, community groups, charities or employees - in fact anyone who needs to put together research projects quickly and effectively. It contains everything from developing your idea into a proposal, through to analysing data and reporting results. Whether you have to undertake a project as part of your coursework, or as part of your employment, or simply because you are fascinated by something you have observed and want to find out more, this book offers you advice on how to turn your ideas into a workable project. Specifically it will show you how to: - choose your research methods - choose your participants - prepare a research proposal - construct questionnaires - conduct interviews and focus groups - analyse your data - report your findings - be an ethical researcher. Contents: Preface; 1. How to Define Your Project; 2. How to Decide Upon a Methodology; 3. How to Choose Your Research Methods; 4. How to Conduct Background Research; 5. How to Choose Your Participants; 6. How to Prepare a Research Proposal; 7. How to Conduct Interviews; 8. How to Conduct Focus Groups; 9. How to Construct Questionnaires; 10. How to Carry Out Participant Observation; 11. How to Analyse Your Data; 12. How to Report Your Findings; 13. How to be an Ethical Researcher; Useful addresses; Index.
