The Strategy
The Right Question Strategy can help all individuals learn how to ask better questions; participate more effectively in decisions; advocate for themselves, their families, and communities; and hold decision-makers accountable on all levels of democracy.
Educators: Use this lesson plan to work with students around the theme of voting. Explore how voting is a role students can play to make their voices heard. Build their sense of urgency to vote. Jump into other lessons about the history of voting, voting rights, and other issues.
Learn about our tools for self-advocacy and voter engagement — building a new pathway for nonvoters that leads to voting.
See how the Right Question Strategy can help people during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
The Right Question Strategy is made up of two powerful tools, both created by the Right Question Institute:
- The Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
- The Voice in Decisions Technique (VIDT), formerly known as the Framework for Accountable Decision-Making (FADM)
Together, the QFT and the VIDT build powerful and foundational skills that are rarely encouraged deliberately.
The QFT is a simple yet robust step-by-step process that can help everyone improve their ability to formulate, work with, and use their own questions. The VIDT enhances the ability of all people to effectively participate in decisions that affect them. Both methods are used across many different fields, including education, school-family partnership, social services, and voter engagement.
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The Question Formulation Technique in Education
In the classroom, educators around the world in diverse communities, from pre-k through higher education across all subject areas, have found that the QFT is a shortcut to stimulating student curiosity, increasing student engagement, and promoting deeper learning. Research has also found that the QFT significantly increases student curiosity, divergent thinking, and cognitive engagement, can lead to better argumentative writing scores, and that kindergarten students who learn the QFT ask more on-topic questions than students who have not learned the QFT. Learn more about the QFT and see it in action in the classroom.
significantly improve secondary students’ argument writing achievement scores.
Across Many Fields
Hundreds of thousands of people across many fields are enthusiastically using RQI’s resources to help individuals develop their own ability to ask better questions and participate more effectively in decisions.
Share the Strategy and Source RQI
Our materials are available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. To comply with this license, you must include the following language on all materials you use, share, adapt, or create:
“Source: The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) was created by the Right Question Institute (rightquestion.org)”
As long as you include this source language, you are welcome to use, adapt, and share our strategies and materials for noncommercial use. You may also create new materials that reference the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) and/or other Right Question Institute strategies as long as you include the source language above.
If you are interested in sharing RQI’s resources for commercial purposes you must contact us by selecting the “Permission for Use” option on the contact form.