A"Six"Step"P rocess"to"Developing"an"Educational"
Research"Plan"
Copyright"2016"
East"Carolina"University-"Brody"School"of"Medicine"
Reproduction%is%granted%with%permission"" Page"7"
Step 3: Specifying a Purpose and Research Questions
Writing purpose statements, research questions, and hypotheses provide critical direction to an
educational research study. They identify questions that the researcher will answer through the
data collection process.
The purpose statement provides the overall direction or focus of the educational research study
(Creswell, 2015). Below you will find purpose statements for the two previous research studies
mentioned in this manual.
• The purpose of this study is to identify what, if anything, students see when they
complete an ophthalmologic exam.
• The purpose of this study is to determine how direct a storyline must be for a medical
student to recognize an ethical issue with a patient.
Research questions narrow the purpose statement. These questions should be developed before
identifying the methods of study (Creswell, 2015). There are typically multiple research
questions for each study. For example, the following are the research questions used in the
ethical issue case mentioned in Step 1:
• Does the student recognize the ethical issue?
• Does the student engage the ethical principle?
• Does the student propose treatment?
• Does the student document the ethical issue as a problem?
• Does the Standardized Patient (SP) observe any difference in students?
• Do the students feel prepared to address the case?
• What in the students’ training helped them be prepared for the case?
Step 4: Designing a Study
How does the researcher choose a research methodology?
At this point, a decision about what type of research is most appropriate to best answer the
research questions developed in Step 3 is needed. Research can be categorized multiple ways but
for this workshop, I will discuss three types of research methodologies: quantitative, qualitative,
or mixed methods. Quantitative research is a means for testing objective theories by examining
the relationship among variables. Qualitative research is a means for exploring and
understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.
Qualitative research is best used to understand concepts and phenomenon, especially if little
research has been done on the topic and research problem. Qualitative methodology is useful if
the researcher does not know important variables to examine. Mixed methods research is an
approach to inquiry that combines both qualitative and quantitative measures. Mixed methods
research is used when the quantitative or qualitative research approach by itself is not adequate