Students spend weeks writing, revising, stressing about word count. Almost no one spends enough time picking the right research question. That is usually where EE marks are won or lost.
The good research question has three things
- Specificity. "The causes of World War 1" is not a research question. "To what extent was German naval expansion the primary destabilising factor in Anglo-German relations from 1898 to 1914" is. Specificity forces you to actually argue.
- A visible counter-argument. If the answer is obvious, you have not written a research question, you have written a topic sentence. You need a question where a thoughtful reader could take the other side.
- Tractable evidence. If you cannot think of the primary or secondary sources you will draw from, the question is too abstract. Walk back. Make it concrete.
Time you should spend on the RQ
At least two weeks. Probably three. Write out a question, try to answer it in two sentences, and notice whether you just wrote a thesis or whether you wrote a mess. A question that resolves to a thesis in two sentences is a good question.
A shortcut I give my students
Write three candidate questions. For each one, try to predict what your final conclusion will be. If you can already predict it easily, the question is too one-sided. If you cannot form a guess, the question is too vague. The one that sits in the middle is the one to pick.