A broad topic becomes an answerable question when it names one place, one thing to measure and one time. This lesson gives you five filters to apply in order.
It belongs to designing a small ethical geographical investigation. Once your question is ready, the next job is choosing a sampling method and explaining its limitation.
What makes a question answerable?
A question is answerable when a student can collect the evidence for it in a few short visits or from one supplied dataset. If the evidence needs a month, a boat or a stranger’s personal details, the question is too big.
Use these five filters, and stop at the first one the question fails.
- Place: can I name one small site I can reach safely?
- Measure: what number, count or observation will I record?
- Time: on which day, at which hour or for how long?
- Method: can I do it alone or in a pair with simple equipment?
- Ethics: does it avoid recording identifiable people and private property?
Worked example: from “flooding” to one question
This is a worked example. A student at a school in a fictional town, Taman Bayu, is told to investigate “flooding”.
Filter 1, place. Flooding in the whole town is too wide. The student picks the concrete drain along the back lane of the school, about 120 m long.
Filter 2, measure. Flooding itself cannot be measured on a dry day. The student chooses something observable that relates to it: how full the drain is, measured as the depth of water in centimetres at three marked points.
Filter 3, time. The student plans to measure at 8.00 a.m. and again 30 minutes after a rain shower, on two school days.
Filter 4, method. A ruler taped to a stick, a notebook and a phone timer are enough. Two students work together and stay on the pavement.
Filter 5, ethics. The plan records water depth only. No photographs include people, and nothing is written about nearby houses.
The finished question is: “How much does the water depth in the school back-lane drain rise at three marked points within 30 minutes of rain?”
The mistake: a question that cannot be answered
The common slip is to keep the topic and add a question mark. The result sounds serious but gives no instruction about what to record.
| Version | Question | Why it fails or works |
|---|---|---|
| Too broad | “Why does Taman Bayu flood?” | No measure, and causes cannot be proved in two visits |
| Too personal | “Which families on Jalan Bayu suffer most from floods?” | Needs identifiable household data |
| Answerable | “How much does drain water depth rise at three marked points within 30 minutes of rain?” | One place, one measure, one time |
Notice that the answerable question does not try to prove why the town floods. It asks for a small piece of evidence, and the conclusion can stay honest about that.
Check yourself
A student wants to investigate “river pollution”. Apply the five filters to write one answerable question for a stream beside a school field. Name the place, the measure and the time.
Answer
One possible answer: “How many pieces of visible litter are on the 50 m stretch of stream bank beside the school field at 4.00 p.m. on Monday and on Friday?”
Place: a 50 m stream bank. Measure: a count of litter pieces. Time: two named afternoons.
Method: walk the stretch with a tally sheet. Ethics: the count records objects, not people, and the student does not enter the water.
A different measure, such as water clarity with a see-through tube, would also pass if the student can explain how it is read.
What to study next
With a question ready, practise the wording itself in writing a research question. Then test the whole cluster with the investigation practice set.
To have a teacher check your question before you commit to it, see online one-to-one Geography tuition.