As an undergraduate student I may have enthusiasm but I do not necessarily have the resources or experiences of yourselves but I do want to carry my questions forward.
As an undergraduate, you not only have enthusiasm, but the wisdom to know what cannot be fitted into an undergraduate research project. Having found 1 000 000 questions to ask, (as you have so wisely have realized) you need to whittle them down to one that can be managed with resources and time available to you.
First, you need to zap all questions that are for your self-enlightenment. When answered they do not add to human knowledge. Then, you need to discard all questions which can unequivocally be answered with a YES or NO answer. Next, chuck away all questions which are trivial, or could be answered by reading the appropriate entry in Wikipedia. Next, forget about all questions which when answered will gain you a Nobel Prize. You are not there yet. Drop all questions that require unethical experimental techniques. Trim away all those questions for which it is impossible to get the required data. Delete all questions which require four years of data gathering. Destroy all questions that require the GDP of a small country to finance the gathering of the data. Trash all the questions which do not benefit the human condition.
You should now be down to 10 000 questions. Ask: Which of these questions is important to me?”, and delete the rest.
You are now down to 1 000 questions. Number each of these and generate a random number between 1 and 1 000. That is the number of the question that you need to ask for your research project.
Both answers are really helpful. During the course of research I have already whittled my million questions down to one that is really important for me to look at and investigated the possibility as doing it as my project. Unfortunately because I am not FT App Psych and a 'shared resource' with Education and Social Sciences on my Early Years and Childhood studies I do not get to do a final year project ;( So I am considering doing my question as an independent study.... Secondly Mark you answer really does help.... My questions are not being answered the way I anticipated well actually that is not true, I went in expecting to find little and little is what I have found which in itself is a great answer but it is very helpful to have your questions because now I know that having similar questions myself was actually a good think and does not necessarily mean my review is rubbish! So thank you so much, that really did help. ;o)
Not come across Mark before Ian - but you are right. He knows his 'onions'. The exact 'rationale' answer is that systematic reviews, done well, should leave 'no stone unturned', give a definitive answer - and raise no further questions. That's part of their strength - but that doesn't mean that they are not flawed. Many critiques of systematic reviews are that they can be narrow and don't expand the knowledge-base - and that (let's take Cochrane reviews) - that they tend to favour positive medical reviews - whether they are right or wrong - whether they are in the minority or not. Given the 'blinkered' hierarchy of evidence' in medicine, as well, that might explain that, sometimes, SR's actually do raise more questions than they answer.
If the systematic review is done well, should leave "no stone unturned" as per Dean's comment. However due to unexpected external factors changes, research limitations, flaws, systematic review critiques etc, those unanswered questions can serve as future research / studies for the same researcher or for other researchers. Because the end of one's research is the beginning of research for others. Unanswered questions are the link between the two for further knowledge contribution.
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