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Question selection and research strategyRung 1 · Introductory

Choosing what to study before you study it

Dr. Harsh Maheshwari · Version 1.0 · updated 24 September 2026 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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Why this book

Most research questions are not chosen; they are inherited from a guide, a dataset that happened to be available, or the last paper someone read. The study that follows can be done well and still change nothing, because nobody was waiting for its answer. This book treats the question as the first and largest decision in a piece of research: how to state one precisely, how to tell a question that can be answered from one whose answer would change what someone does, and how to reject most of your own candidates on purpose. It ends with ten questions of your own, scored, and the reasons you set nine of them aside.

How to read it

Read Book 0’s sections on evidence and study design first, or at least the ones this book names as it goes. Then read this one in order. The exercises are decisions, not sums: write the question, name who is waiting for it, and say what they would do differently. Do them as you go; the list of ten you build at the end is the point of the book.

1 A research question is a choice

2 Population, exposure, outcome: a question in one sentence

3 Three kinds of question, and the study each needs

4 A question you can answer

5 A question whose answer would change something

6 What happens to studies once published: citation, uncitedness and use

7 Who is waiting for this answer, and what will they do differently

8 Ten candidates, one score each, nine rejections

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