Running head: DEVELOPING YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Maxwell Exercise 4.1 Developing Your Research Questions

Karin Fonseca
Valdosta State University

DEVELOPING YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Maxwell Exercise 4.1 Developing Your Research Questions

The magical part of qualitative research, and the one that inspires me the most, is the fact
that the process is ever changing and each step forces you to rethink the process in order to
understand the phenomena of study. This exercise did just that. As I reviewed the identity
memo, I found that the main idea for a research study was there, a subject if you will.
Nonetheless, nor was I able to precisely define the big problem or to focus on the research topic
per se.
The big problem should be attendance decline in Congregations in America and the focus
on determining the leadership tools and factors that strengthen church organization to growth in
the 21st Century. Understanding the big problem, helped me to understand that my conceptual
framework needed to be changed, and in fact, it will need work after this assignment is done.
The reality is that with qualitative research the project will change and evolve to adapt to what is
found and analyzed. I see as a mature process, a person for example grows and mature, change
and evolve and what one might be at age 20 is not going to be at age 30 or 40. The same with
qualitative research, I started with a broad idea of what I would like to research about, and I see
that my focus has evolved, the information has guided me and the process is going to be
changing and calling for adaptation as it happens.
I have realized my personal experience has actually other biases factors that I did not
consider at first, such as doubting the system of a Catholic church, which could also affect how
I perceive any church for that matter. The fact that I have a business background also may play a
bigger role than I first expected, as I tend to divide the faith and critically analyze the
organizational system and might have assumptions of leadership styles. The point here is much
self-analysis and interpretation of my possible biases have to be reanalyzed and taken into

DEVELOPING YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS

consideration so that as a researcher I have the awareness of possible validity threats.

Furthermore, as I developed the concept map I also realized there were many questions that arise
in order for me to understand the phenomena. If I plan to do a case study of one particular
institution to understand the factors that strengthen a church organization and leadership to
growth in the 21st Century, I need to understand what theory would best fit to the study such as
Structuralism, Maslow Theory, Organizational Leadership Theory, Servant Leadership as just a
few. Also I will need to understand how and which factors play a role in each of the components
of the conceptual framework and how they relate to each other.
In fact as I did this exercise, I realized that my study could actually take another
direction, or add to it. For future purpose, I would like to develop a Intrinsic case study and
focus on the success story of the particular Pastor that leads the CrossPointe church as to his
leadership style, as well as, analyze his perspective on what takes to lead the organization to
growth in the 21st century. Nonetheless for the purpose of this assignment, I realized the
conceptual framework still have areas that could be missing, such as religion itself or faith, as to
understanding the views of the Christianity shared by this particular community, which might
help in connection with the many components of the study to further understand the phenomena.
Furthermore, some of the components can be used in observation as to understand how the
community function but not necessarily needed in order to answer the research questions. There
is indeed much polish needed, which is expected in a qualitative study.
Considering the big problem as determining the leadership tools and factors that
strengthen a church organization to growth in the 21st Century, I consider I am in the correct
track with my developed questions, nonetheless I am aware that they still need to be reworked

DEVELOPING YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS

(changes would happen the further observations, data gathering and data analysis is done). The
presented research questions for this assignment are:
Research question 1

What factors describe church leadership in the 21st century?

Research question 2

What strategies and tools did successful leaders employ to adapt to the rapid changes in
society at CrossPointe church while reporting growth within the community?

Additional possible questions:

How the organizational leadership strategy of Cross Pointe Church seeks community

growth in the 21st century?

How does the Pastor at CrossPointe seek growth trough the leadership team and members

of this organization?
How does the Leadership Team perceive the importance of the growth within their
community at CrossPointe and how are they dealing with it?

In order to connect these questions to the methodology to be used, I consider I would need to
take an eclectic approach and use all data I can possible gather. Because the focus would be
trying to understand what this community has done in terms of leadership to continue to grow,
the design strategies used would include purposeful sampling. The use of interviews,
observations and documents would be the primary data collection method. This process would
require a holistic description and search for themes. It is also possible to use cross case analysis
to add to the understanding of the phenomena.
Reflection:
This exercise made me realize the importance of openness to change and adaptation the
qualitative research requires. It inspired me to over think my design, the problem, my goals, and

DEVELOPING YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS

the questions, so that I can develop the best pass way possible in order to find what I am trying to
understand. This was not a simple task, yet extremely important in the qualitative research
design.