These questions were originally posed by Dennis Severance, and I was introduced to them by Judy Olson as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information. They serve as a way to guide the research process and structure an argument for a presentation, paper, research proposal, etc. I’ve found them really useful and frequently go back to them as a way to critique my own writing.
- What is the problem? (in the theoretical debate, the world)
- Who cares? (an argument about its importance)
- What have others done? (the lit review, but pointed as an argument)
- What is your approach? (your general approach, the new idea)
- What are you going to do explicitly? (your operationalization, investigation)
- What will happen? (or did happen, if you have results)
- What does this mean? (in terms of answering the problem)
- Who cares? (in what way is this important)
- Where will you publish these results?
- What will you be doing in 5 years?
Cal Lee also wrote about these questions in more detail in a 2002 article on Guerrilla Electronic Records Management. I was also reminded that these questions are similar to Heilmeier’s Catechism.
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