The research question in medical education

Abstract

The research question is a fundamental component of the scientific method in education, and is an integrated continuum of a logical sequence of steps and activities that attempt to discover the characteristics of educational processes and phenomena, as well as the relationships between its elements, through observation, reasoning and verification, generating advancement of the discipline. This paper analyzes the beginning of the medical education research process, when the investigator develops awareness of a problem that generates questions which, in turn, beget the search for answers. The research question is a structured approach to the uncertainty surrounding an educational problem, which the investigator attempts to clarify; this uncertainty is related to a knowledge gap in educational reality, or after an unexplained contradiction.

The purposes of the research question are reviewed, and reflections are made about the challenges of its writing and structuring. Three approaches are used as examples: the structural aspects of an educational activity (who, when, where, what, how and why); the "PICOT" strategy, similar to the method used in evidence-based medicine; and the systematic method proposed by Bordase and Dawson with nine questions. lt is recommended to evaluate research questions with the following criteria: feasibility, interest, novelty, ethics and relevance. The suggested approaches have common and complementary elements, so each investigator should select the method that is more appropriate to his/ her needs or objectives, given that the research process is not a rigid "cookbook" approach, but rather a creative and complex chain of reasoning that has no fixed limits or specific linear routes.