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Asking questions

Once you’ve selected your topic, you need to refine it, to work out exactly what it is that you want to investigate. You can’t investigate everything about it – that would take too long and you’d probably feel overwhelmed.

Let’s have a look at the sorts of questions that historians usually ask about a particular topic. The questions in the left-hand column of the following table are questions that an historian might ask about an event and those in the right hand column might be asked about an individual.

Questions asked by historians

Questions about an event Questions about a person

What happened?

Who was the person and what was he/she like?

When did the event happen?

When did the main events in the person’s life happen?

Where did it happen?

Where did the main events in his/her life take place?

Who was involved in the event?

What did the person do?

Why did it happen?

Why did the person act in the way that he/she did?

How did it affect things?

How did the person’s actions affect other people and his/her society?

These are just two examples of questions that an historian might ask.

However, it is important to recognise that different types of questions may be relevant to different topics.

You may decide that you only want to focus on one or on a couple of questions about your topic. If you decide to do this, it is best to concentrate on the more complex questions such as:

or