HIS 499 - Gender, Sex, and Family in U.S. History - Spring 2024: Research Strategy

1. Be curious about a topic for which there exists primary sources –either in a local archive, in published primary sources, or a digital collection. What would you like to know? Brainstorm with many questions. Perhaps you might start with:

• An event (a strike, an invention, a battle, a treaty, a new law): what was the cause? Who was responsible? Why him/her? Why did it happen when it did? Can I compare it to some similar event, and thereby evaluate what was unique about this cause/outcome?
• An on-going trend (protests, women smoking, anti-tobacco movement): what was it like for people involved in this trend? Why did they make the choices they did? Why not other ones? How did they choose to participate?
• Individual’s or groups’ motivations and responses – what motivated an individual? How did others understand an event or a remarkable individual? What led a group to organize?

2. Choose the best answerable problem from these questions. This involves narrowing the question, so that rather than asking about motivations generally, your research question might be “Why did x act as she did during the debate over the initial passage of this legislation?” OR “What were three major concerns for y when he was involved in that on-going trend?” Some suggestions for narrowing include:

• Considering a specific time period (the background or ten years after a new invention)
• Assessing the impact in a different location, such as a town you know something about, or have access to the newspapers for.
• Focusing on a single individual and tracing their own experience in the context of a an important event or emerging trend.
• Being pragmatic; narrow your question in light of available primary sources to answer your question.

3. Draft an argument or hypothesis based on that question, and make sure it’s grounded in an historical context (that is, not a trans-historical “people are like this” explanation).

4. Be willing to revise and revisit that argument and/or hypothesis based on what sources you find.

(From How History is Made: A Student’s Guide to Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Discipline Copyright © 2022 by Stephanie Cole)

Is this a good research question? A Self-Test

1. Does my question allow for many possible answers? Is it flexible and open-ended?

2. Is it testable? Do I know what kind of evidence would allow an answer?

3. Can I break big “why” questions into empirically resolvable pieces?

4. Is the question clear and precise? Do I use vocabulary that is vague or needs definition?

5. Have I made the premises explicit?

6. Is it of a scale suitable to the length of the assignment?  

7. Can I explain why the answer matters? 

(From "Formulating a Research Question," Harvard History Department, Kristin Poling)