4 Descriptive versus analytical questions
At some point in your academic study, you may have been asked to be more analytical and less descriptive. However, it can be difficult to understand exactly what is being requested when a tutor or a marker encourages you to be ‘less descriptive’. So, let’s break down the distinction.
Descriptive questions ask about the properties of a phenomenon; for example, what are the properties of A? What does it look like? What does it contain? What processes does it involve? Descriptive questions can be useful when starting to think about a topic of interest.
- What are the key aspects of your topic of interest that are discussed in the literature?
- What theories or methods are commonly used to study your topic of interest?
However, these questions don’t get us very far in terms of explaining or understanding the social world. They might describe how the world is, but they do not help us in understanding how the world came to be. They might describe a political process, but not why a process produces particular outcomes.
Answering these questions requires analysis, demanding, for instance, that we explain, explore, evaluate or compare. What explains why A happens? What factors are important in producing B? What is the impact of policy C? What does comparing two cases tell us about D?
As you can see, these analytical questions allow you to engage much more deeply with your chosen subject, moving beyond surface description to investigating the how and why of such things. In doing so, you will find that you naturally begin to develop an argument, evidence critical thinking and analysis, and demonstrate how your answer is a contribution to an academic debate.
Thus, when developing your research question, your ambition should be to do so in a way that promotes analysis of the topic you have chosen. For your research question, you want to avoid descriptive questions and to avoid research that merely describes a phenomenon, as opposed to exploring, evaluating, explaining or comparing it.