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Formulate a Question

"Questions drive the entire EBL process. EBL assigns highest priority to posed questions with greatest relevance to library practice. The wording & content of the questions will determine what kinds of research designs are needed to secure answers". (Eldredge, 2000)

The mnemonic, SPICE, can help to define focused and answerable questions.

S etting	Where? Context of the service	Library intranet site
P erspective	For who? eg. client, manager, information professional	Staff and students of the organisation
I ntervention	What? The service or planned action	Site improvements
C omparison	What else? An alternative service or action	Current site
E valuation	How well? What result? What will measure the impact of the intervention?	Usability
	"What improvements to the current library intranet site should be made to improve usability for the staff and students of the organisation?"

Types of Questions

Once a question has been formulated, categorising by question type, study type, or domain of librarianship may help further focus the question to reflect the true information need, provide clues as to what kind of evidence might be useful to answer the question, and indicate where to search for the necessary evidence.

Eldredge (2002, p.10-13) describes the three principle types of questions for information practice as exploration, prediction, and intervention. [THIS TABLE] examines the study designs often found for each type of question.

Koufogiannakis, Slater and Crumley (2004) propose six domains of librarianship - collections, education, information access & retrieval, management, professional issues, and reference/enquiries - into which questions may be assigned.

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What's next?

Find the evidence to answer your question.

Comments or suggestions for this page? Email toolkit@eblip.net.au