ASKING A QUESTION

You may have a general suspicion that smoking less makes people feel better. You may think that component A is better than component B. Or you may have an idea for a study method that will make people learn more. Before you begin a study about such intuitions, you should replace vague concepts such as "feeling better" or "smoking less" or "learning more" with definitions that describe measurements that you can make and compare. You might define "better" with a specific performance improvement or a reduction in failure. You might replace "feeling better" with an objective definition such as "the subject experiences no pain for a week." Or you might record the actual dosage of medication required to control pain. If you are interested in smoking, you need a lot of information to describe it. What does each of the subjects smoke ” a pipe, cigars, or cigarettes? How much tobacco do the subjects use in a day? How long have they been smoking? Has the number of cigarettes (or cigars or pipes) that they smoke changed?

On the other hand, you must balance your scientific curiosity with the practical problems of obtaining information. If you must rely on people's memory, you cannot ask questions like "What did you have for dinner ten years ago?" You must ask questions that people will be able to answer accurately. If you are trying to show a relationship between diet and disease, for example, you cannot rely on people's memory of what they ate at individual meals. Instead, you have to be satisfied with overall patterns that people can recall. Some information is simply not available to you, however much you would like to have it. It is better to recognize this fact before you begin a study than when you get your questionnaires back and find that people were not able to answer your favorite question. If you think about your topic in advance, you can substitute a better question ” one that will give you information you can use, even if it is not the information you wish you could have.