Research Roadmap

Research question

A well-defined research question helps to ensure that the study is both (clinically) relevant and feasible within available resources. It guides the study design and helps the study to yield meaningful and precise answers that benefit both patients and clinicians.

Studies are typically designed to answer a specific question - whether by testing a well-formed hypothesis, determining a potential relationship between variables, or exploring phenomena based on existing knowledge, theories, or observations. 

Research questions serve as the link between the problem at which the study is aimed, the study design, the results, and the conclusions. Because of their fundamental role, considerable care needs to be taken in choosing and developing research questions.

Types of research questions

Clinical research questions can be broadly divided into the following domains:

• Therapy/prevention (intervention): evaluating the effectiveness of a therapeutic/preventative intervention (e.g. medication, surgery, change in diet, counselling) in achieving or preventing an outcome;
• Diagnosis: identifying a disorder in a patient presenting with specific symptoms;
• Prognosis: assessing the likelihood of disease occurrence or progression;
• Etiology: investigating the cause of a disease/problem or the impact from an exposure.

Structuring a research question

The PICOT model is a well-known and helpful tool for structuring clinical research questions. It's theory is commonly used in health sciences to formulate questions that examine whether, within a given population or in relation to a specific health problem (P), a particular intervention (I), relative to a comparison condition (C), increases the chance of beneficial outcomes (O) in (sometimes) a particular timeframe (T).

For guidance on how to formulate a PICOT question depending on the type (domain) of your research question, refer to Table “Template and definitions for PICOT questions”.

Once a clinical research question is formulated using PICOT, the FINER criteria can be used to assess its quality and determine the feasibility of the study. The FINER criteria state that a research question should be Feasible, Interesting, Novel, Ethical, and Relevant.

Research hypothesis

The research question leads to a research hypothesis - a testable statement about the expected relationship between the main elements of the study (as defined by PICOT). The hypothesis should be clear, specific, and testable for statistical, and ultimately clinical, significance. An adequate research hypothesis is supported by background research, and will influence the type of study design.

If you have any questions about formulating an effective research question and hypothesis, the department Epidemiology and Data Science (EDS) offers support services via the EDS-Consult Service Portal .