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TACTICS for refining your research agenda: Four Five exercises (all quant- or post-positivist oriented...need to be modified to be more relevant for qual methodologies). Move from 'emergent' / 'exploratory' to more tightly defined / focused. Don't have to be done in any particular order; might even try two tactics at once and see if they lead you to the same place.

1. Start with the dependent variable(s) 
   1. Write down the dependent variable you wish to study. What is it? Why do you care about it? As much as you can, contextualize it within the literature – what theories seem to connect with this DV? Who else has researched this DV? 
   2. What are your options for assessing / observing / measuring this DV? What instruments exist? What are some studies that have used these instruments? 
   3. What are your options for influencing the DV? (In essence: What independent variables might you study?) What intervention or treatment might move the needle? Have any published studies examined these IVs?
   4. Identify one or more 'template studies' for your research – who has done something similar to what you might do? 
2. Refining your research question(s)
   
   1. Write the question(s) you'd like to research. Be sure to include the population, conditions, and measures
   2. Now write a question that you think is NOT worth researching -- it's a 'solved problem'; you already know what the answer will be. Again, be specific about population, conditions, and measures.
   3. Explain why you think you know the answer to (b) -- what literature are you drawing from? Why do you find it credible?
   4. Explain how your RQs, as opposed to the RQs you provided in (b), will advance the field
3. RQ + UTOS
   1. Write you research question(s)
   2. Identify the Units – who is being studied? Where does the DV reside? How granular will your analysis be?
   3. Identify the Treatments. (Note: 'No treatment' is a possibility.) Does it happen to individuals? Groups? Be alert for 'compound' treatments – for example, it's the in-class activities AND the outside-of-class homework or reading.
   4. Identify the Observations – what data will you collect to let you know what's going on with the DV? What contextual data will you collect on the treatment? What data will let you establish comparability of groups?
   5. Identify the Settings – where will this research take place? At what time of year? What might be a salient environmental factor to the students? For the treatment?
4. Building an alignment table 
   1. In the first column, list your research question(s)
   2. In the next column, identify each construct of each question
   3. Next, identify the data source(s) you will have for each construct. Include the timing (pre- and/or posttest, for example). For any pre-existing instruments, include their reliability scores and validation data (if applicable), inter-reliability ratings, etc. 
   4. The next column is 'Analysis' – what will you do with the data that you have collected? What is your expected plan of analysis. Be as specific as possible – include coding frames or specific inferential tests as applicable

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1. Mapping the territory: Build a table of relevant research. Each article gets a row; in each row...
   
   1. Provide the APA citation
   2. Provide the RQs (or research aims / purposes)
   3. Identify the Units
   4. Identify the Treatments (if any)
   5. Identify the Observations
   6. Identify the Settings
   7. ...and then go back and color-code the UTOS cells – which ones are identical to your intended study? Which are similar? Which are divergent? 
   8. (This table will help you both stay organized within the literature AND it will help you identify and explain the gap in the literature that you are addressing. If you discover that you don't have much overlap with the existing literature, either go back and re-scan the lit for anything you missed and/or re-design your study to take a smaller step.)
2. Building an alignment table 
   1. In the first column, list your research question(s)
   2. In the next column, identify each construct of each question
   3. Next, identify the data source(s) you will have for each construct. Include the timing (pre- and/or posttest, for example). For any pre-existing instruments, include their reliability scores and validation data (if applicable), inter-reliability ratings, etc. 
   4. The next column is 'Analysis' – what will you do with the data that you have collected? What is your expected plan of analysis. Be as specific as possible – include coding frames or specific inferential tests as applicable