What is a "research question"?
A topic is different from a question.
A topic is the broad subject of your work. For instance, these are all examples of topics:
- "protests against the Vietnam War"
- "middle-class women's sexuality during the Jazz Age"
- "mathematical discoveries of the Incas"
Topics provide you with a sense of what secondary literature you want to look at.
A question is what you want you want to know about the topic. For instance, these are all questions:
- "How did working-class Americans participate in protests against the Vietnam War"
- "Did sexual experimentation increase in the 1920s?"
- "Why did the Incas place such importance on mathematical work?"
Questions help you know what you want to pay attention to in the sources and also point the way towards the kind of primary sources that will be useful. For instance, if you're interested in working-class Americans' participation in anti-war protests, then the writings of middle-class protesters probably won't be as perfect a source as you could imagine. Newspaper accounts and union records might be great, however.
