Checklist questionnaire when revising a research assignment/project

Designing research implies a lot of steps, and when comes the time to submit our project and we are stressed out and tired, one can easily find themselves overwhelmed with the number of things there is left to check before pressing the submission button.
Below I compiled a list of questions I encourage you to go through to self-assess the research design dimensions of your manuscript and rectify trajectory if necessary. 
Obviously, no such checklist can be exhaustive nor can it match the specific requirements of the many types of format of research projects out there. This is a starting point with some common essentials and it is your responsibility to identify the more specific questions to cover all angles of your research design.
Good luck on pushing your project over the finishing line 😎 🏁 😎 🏁

Introduction

• Is your research problem clearly articulated? (for more information about identifying a relevant research topic see how to identify a research topic)
• Is your review of the literature structured and well organised?
• Is your literature review concise or are there elements not directly supporting your demonstration and that you could therefore delete?
• Is there a clear articulation of the gaps in/limits of the literature?
• Are you contextualising your research problem so the reader has enough information to understand the stakes behind the issue and the rest of the project?

Research question

• Do you have one strong research question directly connected to your introduction and that is answerable thanks to the data your will analyse?
• Does your research question naturally follow the introduction for the reader? Would a reader be able to guess your research question just by reading your introduction?
• If you have sub-questions, are they explicitly connected to the main research question?
  

For more information about research questions, read how to construct and formulate research questions.

Analytical framework

• Are you using concepts/theories to go beyond describing the context and results? (check my blog post "what is analysis?" if you need more information regarding the difference between description and analysis)
• Are the concepts/analytical framework you use clearly defined?
• Are the concepts/analytical framework you use in clear alignment with the introduction as a whole?
• Are the concepts/analytical framework you use only mentioned in the introduction or do you use them throughout your assignment including in your analysis?

Research Design

• Do you justify your case selection? (thinking in terms of case goes beyond country-case, e.g. ableism can be thought as a case discriminatory practices and stereotypes)
• If there are different dimensions within your case (e.g. discourses about public policy produced by young men working in the transport sector in London between 1990 and 1995) are all the elements of your case justified (or, for example, are you missing some dimensions by just justifying why "young men" and not why London, why this time period...)?
• Do you justify the choice of your overall methodology/research design?
• Do you discuss the steps of your analysis vis-à-vis evidence collected?
• If your project is a multi-method research design, do you make explicit how you will use and assemble together the different sources/dimensions of the project?

Method of Data Collection

• Do you justify why the method of data collection you use is the most adapted for your research project?
• Do your justify the validity (and limits) of your data/sources?
• Do you justify your sampling strategy?
• Do you justify the criteria of inclusion and exclusion of your corpus (if you analyse text)?
• Do you provide elements of contextualisation about your data/dataset/corpus so the reader can understand their value based on their role and context of production?
• Is the type of material you analyse aligned with the different dimensions of your case, the literature review, the research question and the method?

Method of data Analysis

• Did you check that you are not announcing you are doing a method but then using another method in the analysis? Did you check in some handbooks that you are not mixing up different methods without acknowledging it? (more common problem than you would think)
• Is the method of analysis chosen aligned with your concepts/analytical framework?
• Is the method of  analysis chosen aligned with the type of sources/corpus you analyse?
• Are you making explicit the trade-off of using this method (and not others)?
• Are you using methodological literature to support your methodological choices?
• Do you make explicit what type of evidence you will be looking for to answer your research question?​
• Do you make explicit the choices behind the construction of your analysis specific to the method you choose (for example the choice of the discourse analysis tools you are going to use, their definition and how they enable you to answer your research question)?

Results

• Is your analysis structured (in paragraphs and using headings) or is it just a list of findings?
• Is each argument you put forward supported by data?
• Are you using concepts and literature to support your arguments?
• Are you balancing the evidence between different sections of your argumentation?
• Read the analysis as if you were a random reader, would you be convinced by the demonstration? Are there some missing elements?
• Are all the elements of good analysis (check the blog about “the wheel of analysis”) present in your work or do you need to strengthen some dimensions?
• At the end of your analysis, are you summarising in a clear, concise and straightforward way your results?
• At the end of your result section (it could be in your conclusion), are you directly answering your research question in a clear straightforward way, like a one-sentence answer to a one-sentence question?
• At the end of your result section (it could be in your conclusion), are you summarising in a clear, concise and straightforward paragraph your contributions to the literature you mentioned in the introduction?

Reflexivity, Ethics, and Limits of your project

• Are you discussing the limits of your work and the steps that could be taken to address these limits?
• Do you provide elements of reflexivity about how your position/trajectory/socialisation might have influence the construction/analysis in your project and the actions you took based on these reflexive insights?
• Do you highlight the ethical dimensions of your project and how you address them?