4  Stage 1: Frame the Question

4.1 Orientation

Research often begins with a subject rather than a question. Political violence, migration, educational inequality, and collective memory can sustain careers. They cannot direct a search. A subject has no internal stopping point. Every document leads to another period, actor, or debate.

Framing creates the first limit. It states what the researcher wants to explain or understand, the unit to which the question applies, the relevant setting, and the period under examination. The limit is provisional. It exists so the collection can begin with discipline.

Framing sets an intellectual limit, not an ethical clearance. Deciding what to collect does not decide whether collection is permitted. Some source families cannot be gathered at all without ethics approval, informed consent, or a data agreement, and those permissions govern whether the work may begin, not only how it proceeds. This guide defers the mechanics of collection to a later module, but the researcher should confirm the ethical preconditions before the search starts.

4.2 Learn

A workable qualitative question establishes an object of inquiry and a relation that requires evidence. “Terrorism databases” names an object. “Why do major terrorism databases report different patterns for the same period?” identifies a relation among classification systems, sources, and observed trends. The second formulation tells the researcher what must be compared.

The question must also expose its assumptions. “Why did the policy fail?” presumes failure before specifying the criterion. “How did officials and affected communities evaluate the policy’s effects between 2018 and 2022?” makes evaluation itself part of the inquiry. The revised question does not eliminate judgment. It identifies where the judgment enters.

State boundaries along five dimensions in running notes: phenomenon, place, period, actors, and outcome or meaning. Not every project needs a narrow value for each dimension. Comparative and transnational studies may require wide geographical scope. Historical research may follow consequences across decades. The researcher should still record what makes the boundary appropriate.

The frame includes exclusions. Exclusion is not dismissal. A study of policy formation may set aside implementation because the causal question concerns agenda access. A study of public memory may exclude private recollection that never entered a public forum. A source can be valuable and remain outside the present question.

4.3 Worked Example

Our initial subject is disagreement among accounts of terrorism. The first question might ask, “Which terrorism database is most accurate?” That formulation is attractive and weak. Accuracy depends on a definition of the event universe and on evidence against which records can be checked. The question also encourages a winner rather than an explanation.

We reframe it: “How do definitions, source systems, and collection procedures produce divergent accounts of domestic and transnational terrorism within the same period?” The new question identifies three possible mechanisms and one comparison. It leaves room for a database to perform well for one purpose and poorly for another.

The frame records a second decision. The module will examine the process through which events become records. It will not estimate a corrected global trend. That task requires data access, calibration choices, and a separate analytical design.

4.4 Try It

Write the present version of the question in one sentence. Then write a second sentence beginning with “This project does not attempt to.” The pair forces inclusion and exclusion into the same frame.

Next, state what would count as an answer. A causal question may require evidence of sequence and mechanism. An interpretive question may require competing meanings and the settings in which actors used them. A descriptive question may require a justified account of variation. If the anticipated answer cannot be described, the question remains too loose.

Save the result as this stage’s artifact, described under Save the Artifact below.

4.5 Guided AI Workflow

AI can serve as a critic of the frame. Provide the question and boundary statement without confidential material. Ask the system to identify hidden assumptions, ambiguous concepts, and plausible alternative formulations. Then ask it to explain how each alternative would change the evidence required. A usable prompt: “Identify hidden assumptions and ambiguous concepts in this question, and propose alternative formulations. Do not choose the best one.”

Permitted input: The question, the boundary and exclusion statement, and the stated purpose, with no confidential or participant-identifying material.
Do not provide: Restricted archival detail, participant identities, unpublished allegations, or partner-owned data.
Verify: Test each suggested assumption, concept, or alternative against the project’s purpose and access constraints. The model lacks the study’s intellectual commitments; it cannot choose the question.
Record: Log accepted changes, rejected changes, the reason for each, and the model and date.

Do not ask the model to choose the “best” question. Review each suggestion against the purpose of the study.

4.6 Integrity Checkpoint

Confirm before saving:

No sensitive exposure: the frame does not expose participant identities, restricted archival information, or unpublished allegations.
No question-begging definition: no contested actor is defined in terms that decide the empirical question in advance.
Commitments separated: the researcher’s normative commitments are distinguished from the evidence a descriptive or causal claim requires.

4.7 Save the Artifact

Save question-framing-v0.1.docx. Required fields are the question, purpose, unit of inquiry, boundaries along the five dimensions, exclusions, assumptions, and the evidence that would count as an answer. Date it. Link it to the project log and the later evidence map. The version number matters because later collection decisions will make sense only in relation to the question that guided them at the time. Later revisions create a new version rather than erase the first.

4.8 Advanced Practice

Some questions should remain open longer than this procedure implies. Ethnographic research may develop its focus through entry into a field. Archival discoveries may shift the relevant period or actor. Participatory research may require the community to redefine the problem. In these cases, framing is an explicit record of the current agreement, not a contract imposed on future evidence.