Existence
questions
of the form, Does X exist Jane might need to ask, “Is
file navigation something that (certain types of programmers) actually do?” and, “Is efficiency actually a problem in file navigation?” Joe might need to ask,
“Do collaborative shared artifacts actually exist?”
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Description and Classification questions
such as, What is X like, What are its properties, How can it be categorized, How can we measure it, What is its purpose, What are its components, How do the components relate to one another, and What are all the types of X Jane might ask, “How
can we measure efficiency for file navigation?” and Joe might ask, “What are
all the types of collaborative shared artifacts?”
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Descriptive-Comparative
questions
of the form, How does X differ from Y investigate similarities and differences between two or more phenomena. Jane might ask, “How do fisheye views differ from conventional views?” and Joe might ask,
“How do UML diagrams differ from other representations of design information?”
The answers to these questions result in a clearer understanding of the phenomena, including more precise definitions of the theoretical terms, evidence that we can measure them, and evidence that the measures are valid. In exploring these questions, Jane and Joe will refine their ideas about the nature of the phenomena they are studying. It is possible that there are already good answers to these questions in the published literature. Jane and Joe must still ask these questions. But a literature survey, instead of an empirical study, may answer them.
Once we have a clearer understanding of the phenomena, we may need to ask
base-rate questions about the normal patterns of occurrence of the phenomena. If we fail to ask base-rate questions, then we have no basis for saying whether a particular situation is normal or unusual. Example base-rate questions include:
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