Which of the following is an initial mandatory requirement for pursuing…

Concept. Research is carried out as a dependency chain rather than a set of independent tasks: what evidence to gather, from whom, and how to interpret it are all derived from a prior statement of what is being asked. A step therefore qualifies as an initial mandatory requirement only when it satisfies two conditions — nothing else in the study can be specified until that step exists (dependency), and it is present in every kind of research alike, whether exploratory, descriptive, qualitative or experimental (universality).

Application. Apply both conditions to the four steps offered here.

1. Dependency: a design cannot fix a sample, a setting or an instrument until it is known what is being investigated; an analysis procedure cannot select a test until it is known what will be measured; a hypothesis cannot predict a relationship until the issue it concerns has been stated. Formulating a research question depends on none of these — it is derived from the problem area and the existing literature.

2. Universality: exploratory, ethnographic and purely descriptive studies routinely run without any formal hypothesis, and qualitative work often settles its analysis procedure as data accumulate. No study of any type proceeds without a statement of what it is asking.

Cross-check. Contrast the other steps by what each one presupposes.

• Developing a research design — a blueprint of sampling, setting and instruments; it can be drawn only after the question fixes what must be measured.

• Formulating a research hypothesis — a testable prediction; it presupposes a stated question, and exploratory and qualitative studies may have none, so it is not universally required.

• Deciding about the data analysis procedure — the choice of statistical or interpretive technique; it follows from both the question and the evidence actually collected.

Both conditions select the same step, so the initial mandatory requirement for pursuing research is formulating a research question; each of the other steps listed here is derived from it or is not required in every study.