A lot of junior researchers struggle with at least one of the following challenges when conducting autonomous research:
-“I’m told to use concepts, but how do I know which ones are relevant for my project?”
- “How do I make my work more analytical?”
- “I’m told to do a literature review, but there’s no relevant literature on my topic.”
- “How do I find literature that goes beyond my case study?”
-“I need to justify my case selection — but how?” 
- “How do I put my case in perspective?”
-“The work I admire contributes to both theoretical and empirical debates — how do I do that?”

The secret is that one deceptively simple question addresses all of these problems at once: “What is this a case of?”.
This isn’t just a philosophical musing — it’s a powerful, generative tool that can supercharge your research approach. Asking this question yields four key benefits:
1. It forces you to situate your project within a broader universe of comparable cases, leading to more rigorous case selection.
2. It helps you identify conceptual anchors for your literature review beyond case-specific sources.
3. It pushes you to develop a conceptual toolbox that sharpens your analysis.
4. It allows you to make a double contribution — both to those interested in your empirical case and to those working on broader conceptual or theoretical questions.
​
In short, asking “What is this a case of?” is a strategic, epistemological, and practical move. It transforms a descriptive project into an analytical one — bridging your phenomenon and theory to produce richer, more meaningful results.

One of the most valuable — and often overlooked — benefits of asking “What is this a case of?” is methodological: it helps you clearly justify and structure your case selection. In social science, cases are never self-evident; they are constructed by the researcher, defined by analytical boundaries such as time, space, the type of documents or data considered, and the actors involved.
The first step in justifying your case is to clarify what it is a case of, using concepts that anchor it in broader scholarly debates. For example, if you study how politicians argue in favour of policy X, you might explicitly want to frame your research as one instance of a broader phenomenon: the legitimation of a public policy, you would . This conceptual anchoring ensures that your work speaks to a wider audience than those interested only in your specific context, linking it to existing theories and comparative studies on similar processes.
The next step is to define the boundaries of your case — temporal, spatial, and analytical.  In the case at hand, this might mean focusing on the economic and demographic conditions of X in London between 1992 and 1998. Making these boundaries explicit clarifies the scope of your study, signals what is included and excluded, and helps readers understand the specific context within which your analysis takes place.
Once the boundaries are set, you can position your case within the broader universe of cases by identifying relevant points of comparison. This might include other public policies in London, the same public policy implemented at the national level or in other countries, or similar legitimation strategies applied to issues other than public policy. Mapping these connections shows how your case relates to others — revealing both its commonalities and its distinctive features.
Your case should also be explicitly connected to your research question, the existing literature, and relevant theories. This alignment demonstrates how your study contributes to scholarly debates: by showing that your case is both comparable to others and distinctive in ways that generate new insights. Such positioning ensures that your work speaks to multiple audiences — those interested in the specific case and those engaged in the broader conceptual or theoretical discussions it illuminates.
In many projects, there is also a “case within a case”, and each level of this nested design needs to be justified. For example, your study might be a case of an urban setting rather than a rural one, or of a city rather than another spatial or administrative unit. You might further narrow your focus to certain boroughs within London, particular age groups, or other sub-populations. Each of these choices — and the reasons behind them — must be made explicit so that readers understand the logic of your selection and the scope of your findings.

When you ask “What is this a case of?” you are also invited to consider whether typical, representative, extreme, or deviant?​ For instance, if you're studying how migrants are represented in mainstream media during elections in a specific country, is your case part of a wider trend of scapegoating by right-wing media? Or is it an unusually inclusive counter-example? Does it emerge from a national context with a distinctive media ecosystem or immigration history? How does this case relate to other cases investigated by the literature?

Don't forget that your case selection is a very important dimension of research design! To sum, it :
- Establishes relevance – Shows how the case addresses your research question and contributes to the broader literature.
- Clarifies representativeness – Explains whether the case is typical, critical, extreme, or otherwise strategically important in illustrating a phenomenon.
- Strengthens validity – Demonstrates why the case is suitable for drawing analytical or theoretical insights, reducing the risk of selection bias accusations.
- Situates the study in context – Helps readers understand the historical, cultural, political, or social background that shapes the case.
- Supports transferability of findings – Justifies why lessons from this case may apply (or deliberately not apply) to other contexts.
- Reveals methodological rationale – Connects the case choice to your data availability, feasibility, and research design.
- Preempts criticism – Anticipates and addresses doubts about arbitrariness, cherry-picking, or researcher bias.
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​Demonstrates theoretical fit – Shows how the case interacts with existing theory (testing, extending, or challenging it).

​Another key benefit of this question is that it helps you build a conceptually grounded and strategically focused literature review. Many students conducting independent research tend to stay close to their empirical context — reading what has been written about their country, their population, or their time period. While necessary, this approach is not sufficient.
For example, if you're studying how a specific migrant group is represented in the media of a particular country, and you only read studies about that group in that country, your literature review will likely be too narrow. Your research risks remaining descriptive and disconnected from broader scholarly debates.
Instead, asking “What is this a case of?” prompts you to identify the concepts that connect your case to broader issues. If your research problem is “the discursive construction of prescribed drugs as a social health issue,” this question might lead you to concepts such as:

• Public policy communication
• Agenda-setting
• Framing and reception
• Social construction of risk and crisis

Each of these opens up access to wider bodies of literature and helps you find theoretical anchors for your analysis.

This process is iterative. As you explore the literature linked to your initial concepts, you’ll encounter additional concepts, competing definitions, and theoretical debates. Use general and specialized dictionaries of social science to clarify meanings. Internalize the concepts that resonate with your research, and start using them as exploratory hypotheses — interpretive tools that help you see your material through new lenses.

​Asking “What is this a case of?” also plays a central role in building the conceptual toolbox that will guide your analysis and structure your research design. It encourages you to view your case not just as a topic or context, but as an instance of a broader configuration, process, or discursive dynamic.
The types of concepts that make up a strong analytical architecture will vary depending on your research design and field. It would take an entire textbook to map them all — and I wouldn’t presume to do that here! Instead, I’ll share an example from the type of research project I know best.

​Let’s return to the case of the U.S. opioid crisis since 1994. This isn’t just a story about drug policy (which would relate to one category of concepts — policy institutions, regulatory shifts, etc.). It can also be framed as a case of:

• The discursive construction of public health threats
• Moral panic driven by discourse
• Racialized perceptions of addiction and social deviance

To sum up, a project is not inherently a case of something per se, it is you who chose what a case is a case of based on your objectives and the concepts your decide to mobilise. Depending on the lens you apply, your analytical toolbox — and your argument — shifts. And so does the theoretical community your research will engage with. For more tips on how to become more analytical check the blog post ​What is analysis ? Some tips to become more analytical,

​Finally, asking “What is this a case of?” enhances the reach and relevance of your work. It allows you to contribute to two scholarly communities at once:

• Those focused on your empirical case (e.g., national politics, a social movement, a policy debate), and
• Those engaged with the conceptual or theoretical problem that your case illuminates.

This is what transforms a good student project into a publishable academic contribution. Suppose you’re working on indigenous resistance to policy-making in Chile. You might contribute new empirical insights to scholars of Chilean politics and indigenous rights. But you can also contribute to broader debates around framing of resistances, postcolonial activism, or state-minority relations.
You don’t need to label your project as a formal “case study” in the methodological sense. But you should approach it as an opportunity to shed empirical light on a theoretical problem. That’s what makes your work meaningful to others working on similar questions in different contexts.
As Robert Yin puts it: “You should think of your case study as the opportunity to shed empirical light on some theoretical concepts or principles” (Yin 2018: 92). Similarly, Flyvbjerg (2006) reminds us that the richness of a single case often lies in its ability to reframe general ideas. Ragin (1992) goes further: the question “What is this a case of?” should be asked not once but continuously, as a way of refining what your case reveals about the world.
This mindset ensures your research has both depth and reach — it speaks to the particular while also resonating with the general.

When you're navigating the complexities of an autonomous research project — especially in an interdisciplinary setting — it's easy to feel stuck or uncertain. How do you move from topic to theory? From data to analysis?
The deceptively simple question “What is this a case of?” can serve as your compass.
It helps you:

• Justify and contextualize your case selection
• Construct a meaningful and strategic literature review
• Build a robust analytical framework
• Contribute to both your empirical and theoretical communities

More than just a clarifying question, it's a generative method — a way to think, structure, and communicate your research with greater clarity and analytical depth.

​Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). “Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research.” Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219–245.
Ragin, C. C. (1992). “Casing and the Process of Social Inquiry.” In C. C. Ragin & H. S. Becker (Eds.), What Is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry (pp. 217–226). Cambridge University Press.
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods. Sage Publications.

In many regards, the research question can be considered the most important part of a research project. Because of its centrality, it is a common source of struggle and anxiety for students as they learn to become junior autonomous researchers.
 
In this blog post, I tell you what the role of the research question is, why it is 300% worth spending time working on it and provide some ready-to-use advice on how to improve your research question, starting with its formulation.  

To start, let’s distinguish between different types of research questions. The list, of course, is not exhaustive. I unpack here the research questions that the students I teach have to navigate in the development of their research projects in UK higher education.
 
1. “Working research questions”
 
Throughout a research project, we ask ourselves dozens of questions while conducting our inquiry. I call these questions “working research questions”.

2. “Main research questions” 
This is a question that comprises a concept and that is pitched and formulated in a way that helps you to produce rich analytical work, rather than only description.

An analytical question will help you produce more analytical results (for more information on what I mean by “analytical”, read the blog post “What is analysis? Some tips to become more analytical”)
 
3. “Sub-questions”
 
Some research designs require the execution of distinct steps, each providing results that will then be analysed jointly, to be able to reach overall conclusions. This can be the case with mixed-method research (part of the research design is quantitative, part is qualitative) or multi-method (different methods are used and all can be either qualitative or quantitative). In this type of research design, different sub-questions may need to be investigated separately, as each constitutes a different piece of the puzzle that needs to be solved to answer the main research question.

Not all the questions we ask ourselves throughout a research project need to be shared with the readers. Don’t forget that a piece of research is an argumentative discourse produced for someone else rather than a chronological archive of every idea you went through. In the same way that a music album is a finite product aimed for an audience to experience, a research paper is an intellectual product, a discourse aimed for an audience to learn from. While sub-questions are essential foundations to understanding the architecture of your project and need to be shared, you do not need to share all the working questions with the readers.

In the rest of the blog post, I will focus on main research questions as this is what most students are asking me about. Regarding my students at the London School of Economics more specifically, these are the type of questions you are usually expected to formulate for 3000 word and 4000 word individual project assignments.
 
The main research question plays several important roles. This is why it is important to spend time working on it …. and a badly formulated research question often involves consequences rippling throughout the rest of the research design (aka shooting yourself in the foot!). A research question is a tool of research design:

'Students often approach the idea of “formulating” a research question as a way to polish it at the end of their project to make it “sound nice”. But there is more to it than that. The words we pick for our research question are more important than any other words in our research project: they are the magic ingredients that can take our research project to the next level. Taking the formulation of your research question seriously enables you to create a more coherent and impactful research design; it also lays a solid foundation for the rest of your project.
Let’s unpack how research questions are constructed through two examples (one rather qualitative and one rather quantitative). I have kept them abstract on purpose so it is easier for you to fill in the blanks with something related to projects that you may have in mind, rather than being distracted by the specifics of what these research questions may be about:

​How do [social group x] experience [something]?
Does [something] impact [social group]’s access to [something]?
 
In the following, I’ll unpack one by one the different types of words that constitute common research questions such as these two:

• How do you start your research question?​

How     does [social group x] represent [something]?
Does    [something] impact [a social group]’s access to [something]?
 
Notice the difference between how these two research questions start. The first one is open-ended (not answerable via 'yes' or 'no') while the second one is closed-ended (answerable via 'yes' or 'no'). This difference has big research design implications, both epistemological and methodological. For example, open-ended questions work well when you have a small sample with rich material that you can unpack analytically to show nuances, tensions and the like. In contrast, 'yes'/'no' questions will often end up leading to very flat results with a small sample. On the other hand, hypothetico-deductive designs often work well with closed-ended questions. Closed-ended questions can also help problematise assumptions that the literature takes for granted (if everyone agrees that something is a 'yes', and your exploratory work seems to suggest it might be a 'no', a 'yes' or 'no' question can potentially lead to very innovative/provocative results). So it is always a question of making sure the word that guides the nature of your question aligns with the other dimensions of your research design.

• The grammatical subject of your sentence

How do [social group x] represent [something]?
Does      [something] impact [social group]’s access to [something]?
 
The grammatical subject is the core of your research design. Make sure there is an alignment between what you chose as the grammatical subject and the rest of your research design choice: such as the empirical material and analytical framework you choose, as well as the literature you review.
 
For example:
 
How does [social group x] represent [something]?
 
Is different to:
 
How is [something] represented by [social group X]?
 
Here I am not talking about active style vs passive; the difference has implications in terms of what the project is about:
 
“How does the World Health Organisation represent childbirth?” reflects a project about international organisations, discourses of authority and policy-making etc while “How is childbirth represented by the World Health Organisation?” focuses on childbirth as a discursive and symbolic site, the history and geography of its representation of which international organisations represent the current instance your project aims to focus on.

• The verb characterising the phenomenon or process you will investigate

How do [social group x]  represent [something]?
Does      [something]        impact [social group]’s access to [something]?
 
This verb is the entry point to operationalisation, so you need to ask yourself: do you understand the process or phenomenon this verb entails and is your research design enabling you to empirically assess this process or phenomena?

• The question mark

How do [social group x] represent [something]?
Does      [something] impact [social group]’s access to [something]?
 
I encourage junior researchers to ask a question with a question mark. This will make it easier for you to identify whether your research question is actually a research question or something else (e.g. a hypothesis or variable in disguise). Make sure that your research question is different from the (formal or informal) hypothesis you may have and that there is not an answer already included in your question (that it is not a real question!).

​Here are a few criteria that can help you further brainstorm/self-assess your research question. Namely, your research question needs to be:

1. Well-bounded, not too narrow (“how does the coffee shop at my university advertise their mocha latte?”) nor too broad (“how do universities all around the world advertise merchandise?”). Include some elements of your case in the research question to help bound the claims you make.
2. Follow naturally from your introduction/literature review. If the rest of the introduction is well written, readers should be capable of guessing your research question without seeing it.
3. Formulated via concepts: concepts a) facilitate empirical operationalisation b) bring analytical depth to your project: e.g. it would be much harder for you to operationalise empirically and to bring analytical depth to your project if your research question is “How do British people portray Polish people in the UK?” than if your research question is “How do urban British youth represent eastern European immigrants?”.
4. Lead to empirical results via the methods you plan to use: make sure that your research question is answerable via the methods that you aim to use.
5. Able to be answered in one impactful sentence. That sentence will be the main takeaway of your project and you should make sure this sentence is explicitly written in your project and not let for your readers to guess.

 
To conclude, there is no cookie-cutter recipe. Each methodological tradition has its own specificities when it comes to what constitutes good research questions, which goes way beyond what a blog post (or my expertise!) allows. But I assure you that implementing the tips I give you in this blog post will help you on your research design journey 😉.