#researchquestions

My original questions.... Yeah, everything seemed all over the place and I obviously needed some clarifications.

I went to the writing center and this was literally her reaction...

Proof that I actually went to get my questions revised! :)

And this is how the questions looked after a little help!

My reflection:

After I visited the writing center I realized I had some misconceptions with the categories of the questions. The person that revised my work, took the time to make sure I understood all of the categories. Though she did not actually help transform my original ideas to better structured questions, I was able to come up with them on my own after her explanations. I wish she could have spent more time to revising my new research questions but overall she was very helpful and I definitely needed some guidance. 

Main topic: The Impact of Income on Life Expectancy

I have chosen GapMinder data set since I am interested in exploring more on the relationship between income levels and life expectancy across different countries.

Research question: How does income per person correlate with life expectancy at birth across different countries and over time?

Are there specific income thresholds beyond which the impact on life expectancy diminishes?

Variables:

I. Income per person

 II. Life expectancy

I have chosen this research question to identify if wealthier countries experience diminishing returns in health outcomes from GDP growth.

2. Supplementary topic: Gender Equality and Economic Development

Research question: Is there a relationship between female employment rates and a country's overall economic development (measured by GDP per capita)?

Does increased female participation in the workforce correlate with other indicators of social progress?

Variables:

I. female employment rate

II. income per person

It has become widely understood that promoting gender equality is an essential component of an effective economic and human development strategy. For example, World Bank (2003a) reports:

“There is now a shared understanding within the development community that development policies and actions that fail to take gender inequality into account and fail to address disparities between males and females will have limited effectiveness and serious cost implications.” World Bank (2003a), p. 4

This information is on Scholar.google.com

Step 2

In “To use or not to use theory: Is that the Question?”, Adriana Kezar discusses a number of ways that scholars have defined and used “theory” in their work.  On page 326-27, she poses a number of questions for researchers to reflect on to that end.  She then applies those questions to how she went about positioning theory within one of her own research projects.  Using her questions and discussion as a guide, draft an entry for your course blog that is approximately 300-500 words in length, summarizing how you personally define “theory” and how you could use it to study the research question you identified in Step 1.

I personally define “theory” as a way of seeing how something is and further explaining how something is in a way that is (hopefully) easier to understand. Further, I feel that theories help to create a shared vernacular to assist in the understanding of a concept between multiple individuals. This is important as individuals often see things in different and unique perspectives. 

Generally, when viewed from a scientific perspective, a theory is unfounded or unconfirmed and serves as more or less as a hypothesis for how something may happen or occur. This is typically true for social theories when attempting to explain a phenomenon or occurrence when discussing something occurring in a person or groups of individuals. 

Theories also often attempt to explain relationships between different thoughts or ideas, again making them easier to understand or conceptualize. I do not believe that theories are firmly rooted. What I mean by this is that they can be refuted, expanded and built upon. This is important as something the conditions by which a theory has been developed can also change. What we know now might not be what we know in the future. Therefore, many theories are not static, unless it is something that is unable to be changed due to its properties (such as perhaps a theory of relativity, for example). 

1.What do you want to find out? 2.What do you hope to find out?

7:47 PM on Wednesday, September 28th, 2016

The process of coming up with questions at the beginning was difficult because  I had no idea what I was doing and what questions to come up with.

Finally after some time I came up with six questions.....

After completing the six questions, having some doubts with my questions, I visited the UWC.

After some revising my questions look like this....

My explanation of the importance of these questions and what I hope to learn from researching these questions.

My experience in the writing center was great, Stephen was really helpful and he helped me understand my confusions. He also helped me evaluate and revise each one of my questions and explain why each question was important. He took his time to read each one of my questions and gave me different ways that I could write each question. I will definitely go back to UWC in the future because it was a great experience and the help I recieved was very helpful. 

And finally I was done with my six questions!!!!!