English Language Arts: Research Questions (TEKS.ELA.9-12.12.A)
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Texas High School ELA › English Language Arts: Research Questions (TEKS.ELA.9-12.12.A)
You are leading an advanced sociology project on the relationship between social media algorithms and political polarization. Your research team has: (1) a de-identified corpus of public posts and engagement data from two major platforms with markers indicating whether content appeared via recommendation features during the 2020 election cycle; (2) district-level polarization indices and validated survey datasets on ideology; and (3) network and text-analysis tools. You do not have access to proprietary ranking code or non-public user data. Timeline: 8 weeks.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry with the available resources?
How do social media algorithms cause political polarization in the United States and globally?
Did the introduction of recommended-post feeds on two major platforms during 2020 change ideological homophily in users' link-sharing networks, compared with cohorts active before the feature, as measured by network modularity and content ideology scores?
What exact weightings and parameters do the platforms' ranking algorithms use to select political content?
Did five specific Texas political hashtags in March 2020 increase polarization among Houston teenagers?
Explanation
Choice B is specific, feasible with the given datasets, and analytically rich (quasi-experimental comparison, network measures). A is too broad; C requires inaccessible proprietary information; D is too narrow to yield complex, generalizable insight.
For a seminar in urban history and policy, you are examining the interaction of late-20th-century infrastructure finance and freeway construction with residential segregation in Houston. You have: digitized HOLC and planning maps; census tract/block-group data (1970–2000); TxDOT project archives; city council minutes; tax increment financing (TIF) district records; appraisal data; and GIS/statistical tools. You will not conduct new oral histories. Timeline: 10 weeks.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry with the available resources?
How did the oil industry shape Texas cities in the 20th century?
What were one council member's personal views on TIFs during a single 1980s meeting?
If a major Houston freeway had never been built, where would affluent residents have moved instead?
Between 1975 and 1995, how did the siting of two freeways and the formation of TIF districts reshape racial residential patterns in three Houston neighborhoods, compared with matched neighborhoods, as measured by block-group segregation indices and property value trends from census and appraisal data?
Explanation
Choice D balances scope and specificity, uses available archives, census/appraisal data, and comparative design to generate meaningful insights. A is far too broad; B is too narrow and not analytically rich; C is a speculative counterfactual beyond feasible evidence.
In an environmental science capstone on urban heat in Dallas–Fort Worth, you can access Landsat-derived NDVI (2000–2020), MODIS land surface temperature, NOAA weather station records, parcel-level impervious surface layers, ACS income data, and GIS/statistical software. You cannot deploy new sensors. Timeline: 6 weeks.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry with the available resources?
What is the association between neighborhood tree canopy change from 2000 to 2020 and summer nighttime surface temperature trends across income quartiles in Dallas–Fort Worth, controlling for impervious surface and housing age?
How can we stop climate change in Texas cities?
Exactly how many trees are required to reduce average citywide temperature by 2 degrees?
Does the new playground in one park reduce temperature at 2 p.m. on a single July day?
Explanation
Choice A is specific, methodologically appropriate with available remote-sensing and socioeconomic data, and likely to yield generalizable insights. B is far too broad; C demands an impractical precision and causal mechanism not supported by the data; D is too narrow and not meaningful beyond a single site/time.
In an advanced literature seminar on borderlands poetics, you will build a curated corpus of Texas-based Latinx poetry (2000–2020) from published sources and anthologies. You have corpus/concordance tools and will perform close readings of selected works. You will not run reader experiments or surveys. Timeline: 5 weeks.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry with the available resources?
How does literature express identity?
Why does a single poet use one Spanish word in one line of a poem?
In a corpus of Texas-based Latinx poetry from 2000–2020, how does the frequency and discourse context of Spanish–English code-switching relate to shifts in narrative stance and audience address, as identified through discourse markers and stanza structure, corroborated by close readings of representative poems?
Does code-switching make readers more empathetic than monolingual diction?
Explanation
Choice C is focused, uses accessible textual data and methods (corpus analysis plus close reading), and can generate nuanced insights. A is too broad; B is too narrow to be meaningful; D requires experimental reader-response data not available.
You are investigating how social media recommendation systems relate to political polarization among U.S. teens and young adults for an advanced sociology project. Available resources include: peer‑reviewed databases; public Pew Research Center microdata; a limited CrowdTangle account for public Pages; volunteer participants (ages 16–22) willing to log screenshots of their Instagram Explore and YouTube Home feeds weekly for six weeks; IRB-style consent templates; and statistical software to compute content diversity indices and analyze survey scales of polarization.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry given the resources and timeline?
Do social media algorithms cause political polarization in the United States?
Which exact features in TikTok's 2021 ranking model increased polarization among U.S. users?
Among volunteers ages 16–22, how does the ideological diversity of recommended political content on Instagram Explore and YouTube Home relate to changes in self‑reported polarization over six weeks, as measured by coded weekly feed logs and a validated polarization scale?
How do people feel about politics on social media across platforms?
Explanation
C balances scope and specificity and is answerable with feed logs, coding, and survey data; A is too broad/causal, B requires proprietary model access, and D lacks a focused, operationalizable construct.
For a Texas-focused history seminar, you will examine how mid‑20th‑century infrastructure shaped racial and economic segregation in Austin. You have access to the Austin History Center planning archives, local newspaper archives, tract‑level Census data from 1940–1980, existing oral history collections from East Austin residents, Sanborn maps, and GIS software. You have eight weeks to complete the project.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry given the resources and timeline?
How did the designation and expansion of I‑35 and urban renewal projects affect residential segregation patterns and property values in East Austin from 1950 to 1980, as evidenced by tract‑level Census data, city planning memos, and oral histories from displaced residents?
How has segregation changed in Texas cities over the last 150 years?
Would East Austin have gentrified even if I‑35 had never been built?
What was the median household income on a single East 11th Street block in 1962?
Explanation
A is focused, uses available archives, Census, and oral histories, and supports meaningful analysis; B is far too broad, C relies on an untestable counterfactual, and D is too narrow to yield complex insights.
You are conducting an advanced environmental science project on urban heat in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Resources include: Landsat 8/9 summer imagery (2018–2023) for land surface temperature, a regional tree canopy dataset, American Community Survey tract data, and GIS/statistical software. You have four weeks to perform the analysis and produce maps and models.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry given the resources and timeline?
How can North Texas eliminate urban heat islands?
What was the exact land surface temperature of one downtown park at 2 p.m. on July 14, 2022?
Will planting 1,000 trees in Dallas reduce heat‑related ER visits by 30% next summer?
Across Dallas–Fort Worth census tracts, how is summer land surface temperature associated with tree canopy percentage, and does the association differ by neighborhood income quartile from 2018 to 2023, using Landsat‑derived LST, canopy datasets, and ACS data?
Explanation
D aligns with available remote sensing and demographic data, is specific yet generalizable, and supports statistical comparison; A is overly broad, B is too narrow, and C requires causal inference and health data beyond scope.
You are designing a nuanced literary analysis on identity formation in two contemporary borderland novels by Latina/o authors with ties to Texas. You have full texts, access to scholarly databases (JSTOR/Project MUSE), and basic corpus tools (Voyant, AntConc) for keyword, collocation, and concordance analysis. You have three weeks to integrate digital methods with close reading.
Which research question would most effectively guide focused, manageable, and meaningful inquiry given the resources and timeline?
How has Latino literature changed over the last century?
In two contemporary borderland novels set in or linked to Texas, how do code‑switching and translanguaging practices construct identity and community boundaries, as shown by a combined corpus analysis of multilingual markers and close reading of key passages?
How many Spanish words appear in one selected novel, and do most readers like them?
Do these authors intentionally alienate monolingual readers through linguistic choices?
Explanation
B balances digital textual analysis with interpretive close reading, is answerable with available tools, and yields meaningful insight; A is too broad, C is overly narrow/trivial, and D hinges on inaccessible author intent.