Data-driven projects always have a “define the problem you’re trying to solve” component. It’s in this stage you start asking questions and come around the issues that will matter in the end. Defining your problem means going from a theme to one or multiple specific questions that can be answered by data. Being specific forces you to think about the data you need and the kinds of analyses and presentations you need to do which then helps you to scope your project: Is the data needed easily available? Are there some key datasets that may be hard to get?
Data-driven projects are, by nature, investigative and seek to answer questions.
If the end result of a project is a visualization or a dashboard, the research questions will help guide your thinking about what should be visualized or displayed on the dashboard. This is important because data visualizations (e.g. dashboards) are meant to communicate information and a dashboard that justs displays whatever data is available would be useless. If the result being sought is an advocacy campaign, then the research question will help focus on the message that the campaign aims to highlight.
By starting with a question or questions, we also mitigate our tendency to design the project by based on a predefined answer or solution: yes, we know that COVID-19 affected procurement but we don't know the extent, duration, or impact of said effect.
Since a data-driven project relies so much on data, it is important that the challenges related to data are identified and understood from the start. This includes challenges in finding or getting the data needed for the project such as an unresponsive or uncooperative government agency or doing data collection in remote areas. A properly formulated research question will highlight the scope of the project and the data needed, allowing you to get an initial understanding of the challenges involved in acquiring the data.
A good research question helps guide the project in both output and scope. It is an essential element to understand what the project is aiming to accomplish. A project can have several research questions but having none shows a lack of rigor or direction for the project.
Properly formulating research questions help with scoping the project in terms of the data needed. However, this will be for naught if you fail to account for other variables linked to the sources of data, its quality, and its accessibility.