The research question or thesis statement is the guiding force behind your project. It clarifies what you are doing, and narrows your research to literature or sources that are relevant. Here are some questions from a variety of fields, some of which might be appropriate to ask yourself when trying to clarify what contribution to scholarship you hope to achieve with your thesis.

• Is your research question a critical definition?
• Is it a critical analysis of the treatment given a single theme by several different authors or commentators?
• Is it testing a hypothesis, formula or procedure with an idea of adapting it, correcting it, improving it, refuting it, showing its inaccuracies or defending it?
• Is it the application of a formula or concept in one field to a subject in another field in the hope of arriving at a unique or comprehensive understanding of a problem?
• Is it a synthesis of previously antagonistic methods, ideas, techniques, hypothesis, and critical stances?
• Is it an explanation of a particular effect by analyzing and discovering its cause?
• Is it projecting a future effect based on knowledge of key principles involved?
• Is it an experiment that shows the accuracy of a basic hypothesis or principle by analogy?
• Is it a comparison and contrast of several different commentators, authors or critics to arrive at some unifying principle?
• Is it determining whether a hypothesis is correct by testing it with experimental or observational data?
• Is it refuting an argument by supplying contradictory data?
• Is it a critical explanation of a particular process in order to better understand or improve it?
• Is it an original creation that expands on certain artistic traditions?
• Is it an interpretation and explication that bridges cultures or languages?