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Construction of Design Science Research Questions
Nguyen Hoang Thuan , Can Tho University of Technology Follow Andreas Drechsler , Victoria University of Wellington Pedro Antunes , Victoria University of Wellington
Posing research questions represents a fundamental step to guide and direct how researchers develop knowledge in research. In design science research (DSR), researchers need to pose research questions to define the scope and the modes of inquiry, characterize the artifacts, and communicate the contributions. Despite the importance of research questions, research provides few guidelines on how to construct suitable DSR research questions. We fill this gap by exploring ways of constructing DSR research questions and analyzing the research questions in a sample of 104 DSR publications. We found that about two-thirds of the analyzed DSR publications actually used research questions to link their problem statements to research approaches and that most questions focused on solving problems. Based on our analysis, we derive a typology of DSR question formulation to provide guidelines and patterns that help researchers formulate research questions when conducting their DSR projects.
10.17705/1CAIS.04420
Recommended Citation
Thuan, N. H., Drechsler, A., & Antunes, P. (2019). Construction of Design Science Research Questions. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 44, pp-pp. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.04420
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Accelerating the R&D of wearable tech: Combining collaborative robotics, AI
A 'hassle-free' model to fabricate materials used in wearable sensors removes experimental barriers in design.
Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have developed a model that combines machine learning and collaborative robotics to overcome challenges in the design of materials used in wearable green tech.
Led by Po-Yen Chen, assistant professor in UMD's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the accelerated method to create aerogel materials used in wearable heating applications -- published June 1 in the journal Nature Communications - could automate design processes for new materials.
Similar to water-based gels, but instead made using air, aerogels are lightweight and porous materials used in thermal insulation and wearable technologies, due to their mechanical strength and flexibility. But despite their seemingly simplistic nature, the aerogel assembly line is complex; researchers rely on time-intensive experiments and experience-based approaches to explore a vast design space and design the materials.
To overcome these challenges, the research team combined robotics, machine learning algorithms, and materials science expertise to enable the accelerated design of aerogels with programmable mechanical and electrical properties. Their prediction model is built to generate sustainable products with a 95 percent accuracy rate.
"Materials science engineers often struggle to adopt machine learning design due to the scarcity of high-quality experimental data. Our workflow, which combines robotics and machine learning, not only enhances data quality and collection rates, but also assists researchers in navigating the complex design space," said Chen.
The team's strong and flexible aerogels were made using conductive titanium nanosheets, as well as naturally occurring components such as cellulose (an organic compound found in plant cells) and gelatin (a collagen-derived protein found in animal tissue and bones).
The team says their tool can also be expanded to meet other applications in aerogel design -- such as green technologies used in oil spill cleanup, sustainable energy storage, and thermal energy products like insulating windows.
"The blending of these approaches is putting us at the frontier of materials design with tailorable complex properties. We foresee leveraging this new scaleup production platform to design aerogels with unique mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties for harsh working environments," said Eleonora Tubaldi, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering and collaborator in the study.
Looking ahead, Chen's group will conduct studies to understand the microstructures responsible for aerogel flexibility and strength properties. His work has been supported by a UMD Grand Challenges Team Project Grant for the programmable design of natural plastic substitutes, jointly awarded to UMD Mechanical Engineering Professor Teng Li.
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- Snehi Shrestha, Kieran James Barvenik, Tianle Chen, Haochen Yang, Yang Li, Meera Muthachi Kesavan, Joshua M. Little, Hayden C. Whitley, Zi Teng, Yaguang Luo, Eleonora Tubaldi, Po-Yen Chen. Machine intelligence accelerated design of conductive MXene aerogels with programmable properties . Nature Communications , 2024; 15 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49011-8
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Designing a Research Question
- First Online: 29 November 2023
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- Ahmed Ibrahim 3 &
- Camille L. Bryant 3
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This chapter discusses (1) the important role of research questions for descriptive, predictive, and causal studies across the three research paradigms (i.e., quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods); (2) characteristics of quality research questions, and (3) three frameworks to support the development of research questions and their dissemination within scholarly work. For the latter, a description of the P opulation/ P articipants, I ntervention/ I ndependent variable, C omparison, and O utcomes (PICO) framework for quantitative research as well as variations depending on the type of research is provided. Second, we discuss the P articipants, central Ph enomenon, T ime, and S pace (PPhTS) framework for qualitative research. The combination of these frameworks is discussed for mixed-methods research. Further, templates and examples are provided to support the novice health scholar in developing research questions for applied and theoretical studies. Finally, we discuss the Create a Research Space (CARS) model for introducing research questions as part of a research study, to demonstrate how scholars can apply their knowledge when disseminating research.
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Ibrahim, A., Bryant, C.L. (2023). Designing a Research Question. In: Fitzgerald, A.S., Bosch, G. (eds) Education Scholarship in Healthcare. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38534-6_4
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Session 8: Market Design
- Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University
- Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University
- Ellen Muir, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This session seeks to bring together researchers in economics, computer science, and operations research working on topics related to market design. We’re aiming for a roughly even split between theory papers and empirical and experimental papers. In addition to faculty members, we also invite graduate students to submit their papers for shorter graduate student talks.
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Posing research questions represents a fundamental step to guide and direct how researchers develop knowledge in research. In design science research (DSR), researchers need to pose research questions to define the scope and the modes of inquiry, characterize the artifacts, and communicate the contributions. Despite the importance of research questions, research provides few guidelines on how ...
New Zealand. Abstract: Posing research questions is a fundamental step to guide and direct knowledge development in research. In design. science research (DSR), research questions are important to ...
Highlights. • We propose a set of six characteristics of research questions. • Effective empirical design research questions are relevant, interesting, and novel. • Further characteristics pertain to method: appropriate, feasible and ethical. • Research questions have implications for other dimensions of the study.
342 Construction of Design Science Research Questions Volume 44 10.17705/1CAIS.04420 Paper 20 treated knowledge as being beyond a research question's scope a nd preferred t o address it in ...
Design Science Research (DSR) is a problem-solving paradigm that seeks to enhance human. knowledge via the creation of innovative artifacts. Simply stated, DSR seeks to enhance. technology and ...
Writing a research question in design science research is about relating two things: an artefact and a practical problem. The idea is that if people use the artefact, it will help them to solve or address the problem. The problem should not be too broad because then it will be impossible, or at least very difficult, to design an artefact that ...
Abstract. Design Science Research (DSR) is a problem-solving paradigm that seeks to enhance human knowledge via the creation of innovative artifacts. Simply stated, DSR seeks to enhance technology and science knowledge bases via the creation of innovative artifacts that solve problems and improve the environment in which they are instantiated ...
Abstract. Effective and impactful design science research requires appropriate research conduct, and an appropriate research problem. Scholars in the DSR community continue to clarify the foundations for appropriate research conduct. In contrast, few guidelines or guardrails have been proposed to identify and develop research problems.
research is to reduce this uncertainty, for example by scal-ing up from controlled laboratory conditions to uncontrolled conditions of practice. In both validation and evaluation, typical design research questions are the same, except that validation questions ask for what will happen and evaluation questions ask for what has happened.
Design science research has been defined as "research that invents a new purposeful artefact to address a generalised type of problem and evaluates its utility for solving problems of that type" (Venable and Baskerville, 2012, p. 142). Since the focus is on solutions, research in design science is oriented toward solving problems, while in ...
In design science research, two important challenges exist to achieve greater influence in research and practice: (1) ... As with similar conceptual articles, the replication research questions and subsequent replication study types serve as a starting point and are not intended to be definitive. The purpose is rather to illustrate how research ...
research (Plomp & Nieveen, 2007; Van den Akker et al., 2006), there is thus still some way to go. In this document I focus on the topic of research questions. Many design-based researchers struggle with formulating good research questions, and in many cases the debate on formulations continues until the end of a project.
Design science research is a qualitative research approach in which the object of study is the design process, i.e. it simultaneously generates knowledge about the method used to design an artefact and the design or the artefact itself. ... The topics of the second lab were the frequency dependency of currents and voltages in AC circuits and ...
Posing research questions represents a fundamental step to guide and direct how researchers develop knowledge in research. In design science research (DSR), researchers need to pose research questions to define the scope and the modes of inquiry, characterize the artifacts, and communicate the contributions.
Design science (methodology) Design science research (DSR) is a research paradigm focusing on the development and validation of prescriptive knowledge in information science. Herbert Simon distinguished the natural sciences, concerned with explaining how things are, from design sciences which are concerned with how things ought to be, [1] that ...
Design science studies the creation of artifacts and their embedding in our physical, psychological, economic, social and virtual environments. Good design improves our lives through innovative, sustainable products and services, creates value, and reduces or eliminates the negative unintended consequences of technology deployment. Bad design ...
Hevner's areas of research interest include design-science research, information-systems development, software engineering, distributed-database systems, healthcare systems and Internet of Things computing. He has published more than 200 research papers on these topics and has consulted for a number of Fortune 500 companies.
The first question asks for a ready-made solution, and is not focused or researchable. The second question is a clearer comparative question, but note that it may not be practically feasible. For a smaller research project or thesis, it could be narrowed down further to focus on the effectiveness of drunk driving laws in just one or two countries.
A good research question is essential to guide your research paper, dissertation, or thesis. All research questions should be: Focused on a single problem or issue. Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources. Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints. Specific enough to answer thoroughly.
A Design Science research methodology for information systems research, Peffers et al., 2007 2. Bridging practice and theory: A design science approach, Holmstrom and Ketokivi, 2009
Design science research starts with the identification of a relevant, practical problem. Researchers must understand the situation in depth to identify all its facets and interrelations (Dresch et al., 2015).Once we know the problem, we need to identify artifacts to address such issues and possible classes of problems (Dresch et al., 2015).By doing so, it is possible to make suggestions for ...
To overcome these challenges, the research team combined robotics, machine learning algorithms, and materials science expertise to enable the accelerated design of aerogels with programmable ...
Americans' Views of Technology Companies. Most Americans are wary of social media's role in politics and its overall impact on the country, and these concerns are ticking up among Democrats. Still, Republicans stand out on several measures, with a majority believing major technology companies are biased toward liberals. short readsApr 3, 2024.
Oct 26, 2020. Answer. Design Science Research (DSR) is a research paradigm, on the same level as behavioral research. A paradigm guides the decision regarding methodology, which dictates the logic ...
Research questions are vital to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research. They "narrow the research objective and research purpose" ([]: p 475; [2, 3]) and determine the study methods (e.g., research paradigm, design, sampling method, instruments, and analysis).Despite the essential role the question holds in guiding and focusing research, White [] noted that academic ...
Organized by. This session seeks to bring together researchers in economics, computer science, and operations research working on topics related to market design. We're aiming for a roughly even split between theory papers and empirical and experimental papers. In addition to faculty members, we also invite graduate students to submit their ...