a research project is known as

Frequently asked questions

What is a research project.

A research project is an academic, scientific, or professional undertaking to answer a research question . Research projects can take many forms, such as qualitative or quantitative , descriptive , longitudinal , experimental , or correlational . What kind of research approach you choose will depend on your topic.

Frequently asked questions: Dissertation

The acknowledgements are generally included at the very beginning of your thesis or dissertation, directly after the title page and before the abstract .

If you only used a few abbreviations in your thesis or dissertation, you don’t necessarily need to include a list of abbreviations .

If your abbreviations are numerous, or if you think they won’t be known to your audience, it’s never a bad idea to add one. They can also improve readability, minimising confusion about abbreviations unfamiliar to your reader.

A list of figures and tables compiles all of the figures and tables that you used in your thesis or dissertation and displays them with the page number where they can be found.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organise your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation, such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review, research methods, avenues for future research, etc.)

An abstract for a thesis or dissertation is usually around 150–300 words. There’s often a strict word limit, so make sure to check your university’s requirements.

The abstract appears on its own page, after the title page and acknowledgements but before the table of contents .

While it may be tempting to present new arguments or evidence in your thesis or disseration conclusion , especially if you have a particularly striking argument you’d like to finish your analysis with, you shouldn’t. Theses and dissertations follow a more formal structure than this.

All your findings and arguments should be presented in the body of the text (more specifically in the discussion section and results section .) The conclusion is meant to summarize and reflect on the evidence and arguments you have already presented, not introduce new ones.

For a stronger dissertation conclusion , avoid including:

• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation shouldn’t take up more than 5-7% of your overall word count.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation should include the following:

• A restatement of your research question
• A summary of your key arguments and/or results
• A short discussion of the implications of your research

Research objectives describe what you intend your research project to accomplish.

They summarise the approach and purpose of the project and help to focus your research.

Your objectives should appear in the introduction of your research paper , at the end of your problem statement .

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

In a thesis or dissertation, the discussion is an in-depth exploration of the results, going into detail about the meaning of your findings and citing relevant sources to put them in context.

The conclusion is more shorter and more general: it concisely answers your main research question and makes recommendations based on your overall findings.

A dissertation prospectus or proposal describes what or who you plan to research for your dissertation. It delves into why, when, where, and how you will do your research, as well as helps you choose a type of research to pursue. You should also determine whether you plan to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives , ready to be approved by your supervisor or committee.

Note that some departments require a defense component, where you present your prospectus to your committee orally.

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Overview of the Research Process

• First Online: 01 January 2012

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Research is a rigorous problem-solving process whose ultimate goal is the discovery of new knowledge. Research may include the description of a new phenomenon, definition of a new relationship, development of a new model, or application of an existing principle or procedure to a new context. Research is systematic, logical, empirical, reductive, replicable and transmittable, and generalizable. Research can be classified according to a variety of dimensions: basic, applied, or translational; hypothesis generating or hypothesis testing; retrospective or prospective; longitudinal or cross-sectional; observational or experimental; and quantitative or qualitative. The ultimate success of a research project is heavily dependent on adequate planning.

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Supino, P.G. (2012). Overview of the Research Process. In: Supino, P., Borer, J. (eds) Principles of Research Methodology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3360-6_1

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Illustration by James Round

How to plan a research project

Whether for a paper or a thesis, define your question, review the work of others – and leave yourself open to discovery.

by Brooke Harrington   + BIO

is professor of sociology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Her research has won international awards both for scholarly quality and impact on public life. She has published dozens of articles and three books, most recently the bestseller Capital without Borders (2016), now translated into five languages.

Edited by Sam Haselby

Need to know

‘When curiosity turns to serious matters, it’s called research.’ – From Aphorisms (1880-1905) by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Planning research projects is a time-honoured intellectual exercise: one that requires both creativity and sharp analytical skills. The purpose of this Guide is to make the process systematic and easy to understand. While there is a great deal of freedom and discovery involved – from the topics you choose, to the data and methods you apply – there are also some norms and constraints that obtain, no matter what your academic level or field of study. For those in high school through to doctoral students, and from art history to archaeology, research planning involves broadly similar steps, including: formulating a question, developing an argument or predictions based on previous research, then selecting the information needed to answer your question.

Some of this might sound self-evident but, as you’ll find, research requires a different way of approaching and using information than most of us are accustomed to in everyday life. That is why I include orienting yourself to knowledge-creation as an initial step in the process. This is a crucial and underappreciated phase in education, akin to making the transition from salaried employment to entrepreneurship: suddenly, you’re on your own, and that requires a new way of thinking about your work.

What follows is a distillation of what I’ve learned about this process over 27 years as a professional social scientist. It reflects the skills that my own professors imparted in the sociology doctoral programme at Harvard, as well as what I learned later on as a research supervisor for Ivy League PhD and MA students, and then as the author of award-winning scholarly books and articles. It can be adapted to the demands of both short projects (such as course term papers) and long ones, such as a thesis.

At its simplest, research planning involves the four distinct steps outlined below: orienting yourself to knowledge-creation; defining your research question; reviewing previous research on your question; and then choosing relevant data to formulate your own answers. Because the focus of this Guide is on planning a research project, as opposed to conducting a research project, this section won’t delve into the details of data-collection or analysis; those steps happen after you plan the project. In addition, the topic is vast: year-long doctoral courses are devoted to data and analysis. Instead, the fourth part of this section will outline some basic strategies you could use in planning a data-selection and analysis process appropriate to your research question.

Step 1: Orient yourself

Planning and conducting research requires you to make a transition, from thinking like a consumer of information to thinking like a producer of information. That sounds simple, but it’s actually a complex task. As a practical matter, this means putting aside the mindset of a student, which treats knowledge as something created by other people. As students, we are often passive receivers of knowledge: asked to do a specified set of readings, then graded on how well we reproduce what we’ve read.

Researchers, however, must take on an active role as knowledge producers . Doing research requires more of you than reading and absorbing what other people have written: you have to engage in a dialogue with it. That includes arguing with previous knowledge and perhaps trying to show that ideas we have accepted as given are actually wrong or incomplete. For example, rather than simply taking in the claims of an author you read, you’ll need to draw out the implications of those claims: if what the author is saying is true, what else does that suggest must be true? What predictions could you make based on the author’s claims?

In other words, rather than treating a reading as a source of truth – even if it comes from a revered source, such as Plato or Marie Curie – this orientation step asks you to treat the claims you read as provisional and subject to interrogation. That is one of the great pieces of wisdom that science and philosophy can teach us: that the biggest advances in human understanding have been made not by being correct about trivial things, but by being wrong in an interesting way . For example, Albert Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics, but his arguments about it with his fellow physicist Niels Bohr have led to some of the biggest breakthroughs in science, even a century later.

Step 2: Define your research question

Students often give this step cursory attention, but experienced researchers know that formulating a good question is sometimes the most difficult part of the research planning process. That is because the precise language of the question frames the rest of the project. It’s therefore important to pose the question carefully, in a way that’s both possible to answer and likely to yield interesting results. Of course, you must choose a question that interests you, but that’s only the beginning of what’s likely to be an iterative process: most researchers come back to this step repeatedly, modifying their questions in light of previous research, resource limitations and other considerations.

Researchers face limits in terms of time and money. They, like everyone else, have to pose research questions that they can plausibly answer given the constraints they face. For example, it would be inadvisable to frame a project around the question ‘What are the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict?’ if you have only a week to develop an answer and no background on that topic. That’s not to limit your imagination: you can come up with any question you’d like. But it typically does require some creativity to frame a question that you can answer well – that is, by investigating thoroughly and providing new insights – within the limits you face.

In addition to being interesting to you, and feasible within your resource constraints, the third and most important characteristic of a ‘good’ research topic is whether it allows you to create new knowledge. It might turn out that your question has already been asked and answered to your satisfaction: if so, you’ll find out in the next step of this process. On the other hand, you might come up with a research question that hasn’t been addressed previously. Before you get too excited about breaking uncharted ground, consider this: a lot of potentially researchable questions haven’t been studied for good reason ; they might have answers that are trivial or of very limited interest. This could include questions such as ‘Why does the area of a circle equal π r²?’ or ‘Did winter conditions affect Napoleon’s plans to invade Russia?’ Of course, you might be able to make the argument that a seemingly trivial question is actually vitally important, but you must be prepared to back that up with convincing evidence. The exercise in the ‘Learn More’ section below will help you think through some of these issues.

Finally, scholarly research questions must in some way lead to new and distinctive insights. For example, lots of people have studied gender roles in sports teams; what can you ask that hasn’t been asked before? Reinventing the wheel is the number-one no-no in this endeavour. That’s why the next step is so important: reviewing previous research on your topic. Depending on what you find in that step, you might need to revise your research question; iterating between your question and the existing literature is a normal process. But don’t worry: it doesn’t go on forever. In fact, the iterations taper off – and your research question stabilises – as you develop a firm grasp of the current state of knowledge on your topic.

Step 3: Review previous research

In academic research, from articles to books, it’s common to find a section called a ‘literature review’. The purpose of that section is to describe the state of the art in knowledge on the research question that a project has posed. It demonstrates that researchers have thoroughly and systematically reviewed the relevant findings of previous studies on their topic, and that they have something novel to contribute.

Your own research project should include something like this, even if it’s a high-school term paper. In the research planning process, you’ll want to list at least half a dozen bullet points stating the major findings on your topic by other people. In relation to those findings, you should be able to specify where your project could provide new and necessary insights. There are two basic rhetorical positions one can take in framing the novelty-plus-importance argument required of academic research:

• Position 1 requires you to build on or extend a set of existing ideas; that means saying something like: ‘Person A has argued that X is true about gender; this implies Y, which has not yet been tested. My project will test Y, and if I find evidence to support it, that will change the way we understand gender.’
• Position 2 is to argue that there is a gap in existing knowledge, either because previous research has reached conflicting conclusions or has failed to consider something important. For example, one could say that research on middle schoolers and gender has been limited by being conducted primarily in coeducational environments, and that findings might differ dramatically if research were conducted in more schools where the student body was all-male or all-female.

Your overall goal in this step of the process is to show that your research will be part of a larger conversation: that is, how your project flows from what’s already known, and how it advances, extends or challenges that existing body of knowledge. That will be the contribution of your project, and it constitutes the motivation for your research.

Two things are worth mentioning about your search for sources of relevant previous research. First, you needn’t look only at studies on your precise topic. For example, if you want to study gender-identity formation in schools, you shouldn’t restrict yourself to studies of schools; the empirical setting (schools) is secondary to the larger social process that interests you (how people form gender identity). That process occurs in many different settings, so cast a wide net. Second, be sure to use legitimate sources – meaning publications that have been through some sort of vetting process, whether that involves peer review (as with academic journal articles you might find via Google Scholar) or editorial review (as you’d find in well-known mass media publications, such as The Economist or The Washington Post ). What you’ll want to avoid is using unvetted sources such as personal blogs or Wikipedia. Why? Because anybody can write anything in those forums, and there is no way to know – unless you’re already an expert – if the claims you find there are accurate. Often, they’re not.

Step 4: Choose your data and methods

Whatever your research question is, eventually you’ll need to consider which data source and analytical strategy are most likely to provide the answers you’re seeking. One starting point is to consider whether your question would be best addressed by qualitative data (such as interviews, observations or historical records), quantitative data (such as surveys or census records) or some combination of both. Your ideas about data sources will, in turn, suggest options for analytical methods.

You might need to collect your own data, or you might find everything you need readily available in an existing dataset someone else has created. A great place to start is with a research librarian: university libraries always have them and, at public universities, those librarians can work with the public, including people who aren’t affiliated with the university. If you don’t happen to have a public university and its library close at hand, an ordinary public library can still be a good place to start: the librarians are often well versed in accessing data sources that might be relevant to your study, such as the census, or historical archives, or the Survey of Consumer Finances.

Because your task at this point is to plan research, rather than conduct it, the purpose of this step is not to commit you irrevocably to a course of action. Instead, your goal here is to think through a feasible approach to answering your research question. You’ll need to find out, for example, whether the data you want exist; if not, do you have a realistic chance of gathering the data yourself, or would it be better to modify your research question? In terms of analysis, would your strategy require you to apply statistical methods? If so, do you have those skills? If not, do you have time to learn them, or money to hire a research assistant to run the analysis for you?

Please be aware that qualitative methods in particular are not the casual undertaking they might appear to be. Many people make the mistake of thinking that only quantitative data and methods are scientific and systematic, while qualitative methods are just a fancy way of saying: ‘I talked to some people, read some old newspapers, and drew my own conclusions.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. In the final section of this guide, you’ll find some links to resources that will provide more insight on standards and procedures governing qualitative research, but suffice it to say: there are rules about what constitutes legitimate evidence and valid analytical procedure for qualitative data, just as there are for quantitative data.

Circle back and consider revising your initial plans

As you work through these four steps in planning your project, it’s perfectly normal to circle back and revise. Research planning is rarely a linear process. It’s also common for new and unexpected avenues to suggest themselves. As the sociologist Thorstein Veblen wrote in 1908 : ‘The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.’ That’s as true of research planning as it is of a completed project. Try to enjoy the horizons that open up for you in this process, rather than becoming overwhelmed; the four steps, along with the two exercises that follow, will help you focus your plan and make it manageable.

Key points – How to plan a research project

• Planning a research project is essential no matter your academic level or field of study. There is no one ‘best’ way to design research, but there are certain guidelines that can be helpfully applied across disciplines.
• Orient yourself to knowledge-creation. Make the shift from being a consumer of information to being a producer of information.
• Define your research question. Your question frames the rest of your project, sets the scope, and determines the kinds of answers you can find.
• Review previous research on your question. Survey the existing body of relevant knowledge to ensure that your research will be part of a larger conversation.
• Choose your data and methods. For instance, will you be collecting qualitative data, via interviews, or numerical data, via surveys?
• Circle back and consider revising your initial plans. Expect your research question in particular to undergo multiple rounds of refinement as you learn more about your topic.

Good research questions tend to beget more questions. This can be frustrating for those who want to get down to business right away. Try to make room for the unexpected: this is usually how knowledge advances. Many of the most significant discoveries in human history have been made by people who were looking for something else entirely. There are ways to structure your research planning process without over-constraining yourself; the two exercises below are a start, and you can find further methods in the Links and Books section.

The following exercise provides a structured process for advancing your research project planning. After completing it, you’ll be able to do the following:

• describe clearly and concisely the question you’ve chosen to study
• summarise the state of the art in knowledge about the question, and where your project could contribute new insight
• identify the best strategy for gathering and analysing relevant data

In other words, the following provides a systematic means to establish the building blocks of your research project.

Exercise 1: Definition of research question and sources

This exercise prompts you to select and clarify your general interest area, develop a research question, and investigate sources of information. The annotated bibliography will also help you refine your research question so that you can begin the second assignment, a description of the phenomenon you wish to study.

Jot down a few bullet points in response to these two questions, with the understanding that you’ll probably go back and modify your answers as you begin reading other studies relevant to your topic:

• What will be the general topic of your paper?
• What will be the specific topic of your paper?

b) Research question(s)

Use the following guidelines to frame a research question – or questions – that will drive your analysis. As with Part 1 above, you’ll probably find it necessary to change or refine your research question(s) as you complete future assignments.

• Your question should be phrased so that it can’t be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
• Your question should have more than one plausible answer.
• Your question should draw relationships between two or more concepts; framing the question in terms of How? or What? often works better than asking Why ?

c) Annotated bibliography

Most or all of your background information should come from two sources: scholarly books and journals, or reputable mass media sources. You might be able to access journal articles electronically through your library, using search engines such as JSTOR and Google Scholar. This can save you a great deal of time compared with going to the library in person to search periodicals. General news sources, such as those accessible through LexisNexis, are acceptable, but should be cited sparingly, since they don’t carry the same level of credibility as scholarly sources. As discussed above, unvetted sources such as blogs and Wikipedia should be avoided, because the quality of the information they provide is unreliable and often misleading.

To create an annotated bibliography, provide the following information for at least 10 sources relevant to your specific topic, using the format suggested below.

Name of author(s):

Publication date:

Title of book, chapter, or article:

If a chapter or article, title of journal or book where they appear:

Brief description of this work, including main findings and methods ( c 75 words):

Summary of how this work contributes to your project ( c 75 words):

Brief description of the implications of this work ( c 25 words):

Identify any gap or controversy in knowledge this work points up, and how your project could address those problems ( c 50 words):

Exercise 2: Towards an analysis

Develop a short statement ( c 250 words) about the kind of data that would be useful to address your research question, and how you’d analyse it. Some questions to consider in writing this statement include:

• What are the central concepts or variables in your project? Offer a brief definition of each.
• Do any data sources exist on those concepts or variables, or would you need to collect data?
• Of the analytical strategies you could apply to that data, which would be the most appropriate to answer your question? Which would be the most feasible for you? Consider at least two methods, noting their advantages or disadvantages for your project.

Links & books

One of the best texts ever written about planning and executing research comes from a source that might be unexpected: a 60-year-old work on urban planning by a self-trained scholar. The classic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by Jane Jacobs (available complete and free of charge via this link ) is worth reading in its entirety just for the pleasure of it. But the final 20 pages – a concluding chapter titled ‘The Kind of Problem a City Is’ – are really about the process of thinking through and investigating a problem. Highly recommended as a window into the craft of research.

Jacobs’s text references an essay on advancing human knowledge by the mathematician Warren Weaver. At the time, Weaver was director of the Rockefeller Foundation, in charge of funding basic research in the natural and medical sciences. Although the essay is titled ‘A Quarter Century in the Natural Sciences’ (1960) and appears at first blush to be merely a summation of one man’s career, it turns out to be something much bigger and more interesting: a meditation on the history of human beings seeking answers to big questions about the world. Weaver goes back to the 17th century to trace the origins of systematic research thinking, with enthusiasm and vivid anecdotes that make the process come alive. The essay is worth reading in its entirety, and is available free of charge via this link .

For those seeking a more in-depth, professional-level discussion of the logic of research design, the political scientist Harvey Starr provides insight in a compact format in the article ‘Cumulation from Proper Specification: Theory, Logic, Research Design, and “Nice” Laws’ (2005). Starr reviews the ‘research triad’, consisting of the interlinked considerations of formulating a question, selecting relevant theories and applying appropriate methods. The full text of the article, published in the scholarly journal Conflict Management and Peace Science , is available, free of charge, via this link .

Finally, the book Getting What You Came For (1992) by Robert Peters is not only an outstanding guide for anyone contemplating graduate school – from the application process onward – but it also includes several excellent chapters on planning and executing research, applicable across a wide variety of subject areas. It was an invaluable resource for me 25 years ago, and it remains in print with good reason; I recommend it to all my students, particularly Chapter 16 (‘The Thesis Topic: Finding It’), Chapter 17 (‘The Thesis Proposal’) and Chapter 18 (‘The Thesis: Writing It’).

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Module 1: Introduction: What is Research?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Explain how the scientific method is used to develop new knowledge
• Describe why it is important to follow a research plan

The Scientific Method consists of observing the world around you and creating a  hypothesis  about relationships in the world. A hypothesis is an informed and educated prediction or explanation about something. Part of the research process involves testing the  hypothesis , and then examining the results of these tests as they relate to both the hypothesis and the world around you. When a researcher forms a hypothesis, this acts like a map through the research study. It tells the researcher which factors are important to study and how they might be related to each other or caused by a  manipulation  that the researcher introduces (e.g. a program, treatment or change in the environment). With this map, the researcher can interpret the information he/she collects and can make sound conclusions about the results.

Research can be done with human beings, animals, plants, other organisms and inorganic matter. When research is done with human beings and animals, it must follow specific rules about the treatment of humans and animals that have been created by the U.S. Federal Government. This ensures that humans and animals are treated with dignity and respect, and that the research causes minimal harm.

No matter what topic is being studied, the value of the research depends on how well it is designed and done. Therefore, one of the most important considerations in doing good research is to follow the design or plan that is developed by an experienced researcher who is called the  Principal Investigator  (PI). The PI is in charge of all aspects of the research and creates what is called a  protocol  (the research plan) that all people doing the research must follow. By doing so, the PI and the public can be sure that the results of the research are real and useful to other scientists.

Module 1: Discussion Questions

• How is a hypothesis like a road map?
• Who is ultimately responsible for the design and conduct of a research study?
• How does following the research protocol contribute to informing public health practices?

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What is Research? – Purpose of Research

• By DiscoverPhDs
• September 10, 2020

The purpose of research is to enhance society by advancing knowledge through the development of scientific theories, concepts and ideas. A research purpose is met through forming hypotheses, collecting data, analysing results, forming conclusions, implementing findings into real-life applications and forming new research questions.

What is Research

Simply put, research is the process of discovering new knowledge. This knowledge can be either the development of new concepts or the advancement of existing knowledge and theories, leading to a new understanding that was not previously known.

As a more formal definition of research, the following has been extracted from the Code of Federal Regulations :

While research can be carried out by anyone and in any field, most research is usually done to broaden knowledge in the physical, biological, and social worlds. This can range from learning why certain materials behave the way they do, to asking why certain people are more resilient than others when faced with the same challenges.

The use of ‘systematic investigation’ in the formal definition represents how research is normally conducted – a hypothesis is formed, appropriate research methods are designed, data is collected and analysed, and research results are summarised into one or more ‘research conclusions’. These research conclusions are then shared with the rest of the scientific community to add to the existing knowledge and serve as evidence to form additional questions that can be investigated. It is this cyclical process that enables scientific research to make continuous progress over the years; the true purpose of research.

What is the Purpose of Research

From weather forecasts to the discovery of antibiotics, researchers are constantly trying to find new ways to understand the world and how things work – with the ultimate goal of improving our lives.

The purpose of research is therefore to find out what is known, what is not and what we can develop further. In this way, scientists can develop new theories, ideas and products that shape our society and our everyday lives.

Although research can take many forms, there are three main purposes of research:

• Exploratory: Exploratory research is the first research to be conducted around a problem that has not yet been clearly defined. Exploration research therefore aims to gain a better understanding of the exact nature of the problem and not to provide a conclusive answer to the problem itself. This enables us to conduct more in-depth research later on.
• Descriptive: Descriptive research expands knowledge of a research problem or phenomenon by describing it according to its characteristics and population. Descriptive research focuses on the ‘how’ and ‘what’, but not on the ‘why’.
• Explanatory: Explanatory research, also referred to as casual research, is conducted to determine how variables interact, i.e. to identify cause-and-effect relationships. Explanatory research deals with the ‘why’ of research questions and is therefore often based on experiments.

Characteristics of Research

There are 8 core characteristics that all research projects should have. These are:

• Empirical  – based on proven scientific methods derived from real-life observations and experiments.
• Logical  – follows sequential procedures based on valid principles.
• Cyclic  – research begins with a question and ends with a question, i.e. research should lead to a new line of questioning.
• Controlled  – vigorous measures put into place to keep all variables constant, except those under investigation.
• Hypothesis-based  – the research design generates data that sufficiently meets the research objectives and can prove or disprove the hypothesis. It makes the research study repeatable and gives credibility to the results.
• Analytical  – data is generated, recorded and analysed using proven techniques to ensure high accuracy and repeatability while minimising potential errors and anomalies.
• Objective  – sound judgement is used by the researcher to ensure that the research findings are valid.
• Statistical treatment  – statistical treatment is used to transform the available data into something more meaningful from which knowledge can be gained.

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Types of Research

Research can be divided into two main types: basic research (also known as pure research) and applied research.

Basic Research

Basic research, also known as pure research, is an original investigation into the reasons behind a process, phenomenon or particular event. It focuses on generating knowledge around existing basic principles.

Basic research is generally considered ‘non-commercial research’ because it does not focus on solving practical problems, and has no immediate benefit or ways it can be applied.

While basic research may not have direct applications, it usually provides new insights that can later be used in applied research.

Applied Research

Applied research investigates well-known theories and principles in order to enhance knowledge around a practical aim. Because of this, applied research focuses on solving real-life problems by deriving knowledge which has an immediate application.

Methods of Research

Research methods for data collection fall into one of two categories: inductive methods or deductive methods.

Inductive research methods focus on the analysis of an observation and are usually associated with qualitative research. Deductive research methods focus on the verification of an observation and are typically associated with quantitative research.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a method that enables non-numerical data collection through open-ended methods such as interviews, case studies and focus groups .

It enables researchers to collect data on personal experiences, feelings or behaviours, as well as the reasons behind them. Because of this, qualitative research is often used in fields such as social science, psychology and philosophy and other areas where it is useful to know the connection between what has occurred and why it has occurred.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is a method that collects and analyses numerical data through statistical analysis.

It allows us to quantify variables, uncover relationships, and make generalisations across a larger population. As a result, quantitative research is often used in the natural and physical sciences such as engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, finance, and medical research, etc.

What does Research Involve?

Research often follows a systematic approach known as a Scientific Method, which is carried out using an hourglass model.

A research project first starts with a problem statement, or rather, the research purpose for engaging in the study. This can take the form of the ‘ scope of the study ’ or ‘ aims and objectives ’ of your research topic.

Subsequently, a literature review is carried out and a hypothesis is formed. The researcher then creates a research methodology and collects the data.

The data is then analysed using various statistical methods and the null hypothesis is either accepted or rejected.

In both cases, the study and its conclusion are officially written up as a report or research paper, and the researcher may also recommend lines of further questioning. The report or research paper is then shared with the wider research community, and the cycle begins all over again.

Although these steps outline the overall research process, keep in mind that research projects are highly dynamic and are therefore considered an iterative process with continued refinements and not a series of fixed stages.

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Home » Research Methodology – Types, Examples and writing Guide

Research Methodology – Types, Examples and writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Methodology

Definition:

Research Methodology refers to the systematic and scientific approach used to conduct research, investigate problems, and gather data and information for a specific purpose. It involves the techniques and procedures used to identify, collect , analyze , and interpret data to answer research questions or solve research problems . Moreover, They are philosophical and theoretical frameworks that guide the research process.

Structure of Research Methodology

Research methodology formats can vary depending on the specific requirements of the research project, but the following is a basic example of a structure for a research methodology section:

I. Introduction

• Provide an overview of the research problem and the need for a research methodology section
• Outline the main research questions and objectives

II. Research Design

• Explain the research design chosen and why it is appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Discuss any alternative research designs considered and why they were not chosen
• Describe the research setting and participants (if applicable)

III. Data Collection Methods

• Describe the methods used to collect data (e.g., surveys, interviews, observations)
• Explain how the data collection methods were chosen and why they are appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Detail any procedures or instruments used for data collection

IV. Data Analysis Methods

• Describe the methods used to analyze the data (e.g., statistical analysis, content analysis )
• Explain how the data analysis methods were chosen and why they are appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Detail any procedures or software used for data analysis

V. Ethical Considerations

• Discuss any ethical issues that may arise from the research and how they were addressed
• Explain how informed consent was obtained (if applicable)
• Detail any measures taken to ensure confidentiality and anonymity

VI. Limitations

• Identify any potential limitations of the research methodology and how they may impact the results and conclusions

VII. Conclusion

• Summarize the key aspects of the research methodology section
• Explain how the research methodology addresses the research question(s) and objectives

Research Methodology Types

Types of Research Methodology are as follows:

Quantitative Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of numerical data using statistical methods. This type of research is often used to study cause-and-effect relationships and to make predictions.

Qualitative Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data such as words, images, and observations. This type of research is often used to explore complex phenomena, to gain an in-depth understanding of a particular topic, and to generate hypotheses.

Mixed-Methods Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that combines elements of both quantitative and qualitative research. This approach can be particularly useful for studies that aim to explore complex phenomena and to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a particular topic.

Case Study Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves in-depth examination of a single case or a small number of cases. Case studies are often used in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to gain a detailed understanding of a particular individual or group.

Action Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves a collaborative process between researchers and practitioners to identify and solve real-world problems. Action research is often used in education, healthcare, and social work.

Experimental Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the manipulation of one or more independent variables to observe their effects on a dependent variable. Experimental research is often used to study cause-and-effect relationships and to make predictions.

Survey Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection of data from a sample of individuals using questionnaires or interviews. Survey research is often used to study attitudes, opinions, and behaviors.

Grounded Theory Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the development of theories based on the data collected during the research process. Grounded theory is often used in sociology and anthropology to generate theories about social phenomena.

Research Methodology Example

An Example of Research Methodology could be the following:

Research Methodology for Investigating the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Reducing Symptoms of Depression in Adults

Introduction:

The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in reducing symptoms of depression in adults. To achieve this objective, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted using a mixed-methods approach.

Research Design:

The study will follow a pre-test and post-test design with two groups: an experimental group receiving CBT and a control group receiving no intervention. The study will also include a qualitative component, in which semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a subset of participants to explore their experiences of receiving CBT.

Participants:

Participants will be recruited from community mental health clinics in the local area. The sample will consist of 100 adults aged 18-65 years old who meet the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group.

Intervention :

The experimental group will receive 12 weekly sessions of CBT, each lasting 60 minutes. The intervention will be delivered by licensed mental health professionals who have been trained in CBT. The control group will receive no intervention during the study period.

Data Collection:

Quantitative data will be collected through the use of standardized measures such as the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). Data will be collected at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and at a 3-month follow-up. Qualitative data will be collected through semi-structured interviews with a subset of participants from the experimental group. The interviews will be conducted at the end of the intervention period, and will explore participants’ experiences of receiving CBT.

Data Analysis:

Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and mixed-model analyses of variance (ANOVA) to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Qualitative data will be analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common themes and patterns in participants’ experiences of receiving CBT.

Ethical Considerations:

This study will comply with ethical guidelines for research involving human subjects. Participants will provide informed consent before participating in the study, and their privacy and confidentiality will be protected throughout the study. Any adverse events or reactions will be reported and managed appropriately.

Data Management:

All data collected will be kept confidential and stored securely using password-protected databases. Identifying information will be removed from qualitative data transcripts to ensure participants’ anonymity.

Limitations:

One potential limitation of this study is that it only focuses on one type of psychotherapy, CBT, and may not generalize to other types of therapy or interventions. Another limitation is that the study will only include participants from community mental health clinics, which may not be representative of the general population.

Conclusion:

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of CBT in reducing symptoms of depression in adults. By using a randomized controlled trial and a mixed-methods approach, the study will provide valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between CBT and depression. The results of this study will have important implications for the development of effective treatments for depression in clinical settings.

How to Write Research Methodology

Writing a research methodology involves explaining the methods and techniques you used to conduct research, collect data, and analyze results. It’s an essential section of any research paper or thesis, as it helps readers understand the validity and reliability of your findings. Here are the steps to write a research methodology:

• Start by explaining your research question: Begin the methodology section by restating your research question and explaining why it’s important. This helps readers understand the purpose of your research and the rationale behind your methods.
• Describe your research design: Explain the overall approach you used to conduct research. This could be a qualitative or quantitative research design, experimental or non-experimental, case study or survey, etc. Discuss the advantages and limitations of the chosen design.
• Discuss your sample: Describe the participants or subjects you included in your study. Include details such as their demographics, sampling method, sample size, and any exclusion criteria used.
• Describe your data collection methods : Explain how you collected data from your participants. This could include surveys, interviews, observations, questionnaires, or experiments. Include details on how you obtained informed consent, how you administered the tools, and how you minimized the risk of bias.
• Explain your data analysis techniques: Describe the methods you used to analyze the data you collected. This could include statistical analysis, content analysis, thematic analysis, or discourse analysis. Explain how you dealt with missing data, outliers, and any other issues that arose during the analysis.
• Discuss the validity and reliability of your research : Explain how you ensured the validity and reliability of your study. This could include measures such as triangulation, member checking, peer review, or inter-coder reliability.
• Acknowledge any limitations of your research: Discuss any limitations of your study, including any potential threats to validity or generalizability. This helps readers understand the scope of your findings and how they might apply to other contexts.
• Provide a summary: End the methodology section by summarizing the methods and techniques you used to conduct your research. This provides a clear overview of your research methodology and helps readers understand the process you followed to arrive at your findings.

When to Write Research Methodology

Research methodology is typically written after the research proposal has been approved and before the actual research is conducted. It should be written prior to data collection and analysis, as it provides a clear roadmap for the research project.

The research methodology is an important section of any research paper or thesis, as it describes the methods and procedures that will be used to conduct the research. It should include details about the research design, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, and any ethical considerations.

The methodology should be written in a clear and concise manner, and it should be based on established research practices and standards. It is important to provide enough detail so that the reader can understand how the research was conducted and evaluate the validity of the results.

Applications of Research Methodology

Here are some of the applications of research methodology:

• To identify the research problem: Research methodology is used to identify the research problem, which is the first step in conducting any research.
• To design the research: Research methodology helps in designing the research by selecting the appropriate research method, research design, and sampling technique.
• To collect data: Research methodology provides a systematic approach to collect data from primary and secondary sources.
• To analyze data: Research methodology helps in analyzing the collected data using various statistical and non-statistical techniques.
• To test hypotheses: Research methodology provides a framework for testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions based on the analysis of data.
• To generalize findings: Research methodology helps in generalizing the findings of the research to the target population.
• To develop theories : Research methodology is used to develop new theories and modify existing theories based on the findings of the research.
• To evaluate programs and policies : Research methodology is used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and policies by collecting data and analyzing it.
• To improve decision-making: Research methodology helps in making informed decisions by providing reliable and valid data.

Purpose of Research Methodology

Research methodology serves several important purposes, including:

• To guide the research process: Research methodology provides a systematic framework for conducting research. It helps researchers to plan their research, define their research questions, and select appropriate methods and techniques for collecting and analyzing data.
• To ensure research quality: Research methodology helps researchers to ensure that their research is rigorous, reliable, and valid. It provides guidelines for minimizing bias and error in data collection and analysis, and for ensuring that research findings are accurate and trustworthy.
• To replicate research: Research methodology provides a clear and detailed account of the research process, making it possible for other researchers to replicate the study and verify its findings.
• To advance knowledge: Research methodology enables researchers to generate new knowledge and to contribute to the body of knowledge in their field. It provides a means for testing hypotheses, exploring new ideas, and discovering new insights.
• To inform decision-making: Research methodology provides evidence-based information that can inform policy and decision-making in a variety of fields, including medicine, public health, education, and business.

Advantages of Research Methodology

Research methodology has several advantages that make it a valuable tool for conducting research in various fields. Here are some of the key advantages of research methodology:

• Systematic and structured approach : Research methodology provides a systematic and structured approach to conducting research, which ensures that the research is conducted in a rigorous and comprehensive manner.
• Objectivity : Research methodology aims to ensure objectivity in the research process, which means that the research findings are based on evidence and not influenced by personal bias or subjective opinions.
• Replicability : Research methodology ensures that research can be replicated by other researchers, which is essential for validating research findings and ensuring their accuracy.
• Reliability : Research methodology aims to ensure that the research findings are reliable, which means that they are consistent and can be depended upon.
• Validity : Research methodology ensures that the research findings are valid, which means that they accurately reflect the research question or hypothesis being tested.
• Efficiency : Research methodology provides a structured and efficient way of conducting research, which helps to save time and resources.
• Flexibility : Research methodology allows researchers to choose the most appropriate research methods and techniques based on the research question, data availability, and other relevant factors.
• Scope for innovation: Research methodology provides scope for innovation and creativity in designing research studies and developing new research techniques.

Research Methodology Vs Research Methods

About the author.

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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How to Do a Research Project?

• Updated on  
• Mar 21, 2023

To begin your thesis, the first step is to find a suitable topic per your interests and selecting a good topic is only the beginning of it all. Carrying out a research project, scholars aim to provide answers to the research questions through an in-depth study of the topic. Many universities require their students to submit a research project as part of their course, especially at the master’s level of study and doctoral degrees . So if you are wondering how to do a research project, this blog is for you! Read on to know the different steps to follow to write an excellent research project.

This Blog Includes:

Select a topic of your interest, find a supervisor, invest time in secondary research, locate and analyse primary sources, start drafting your paper, put proper citations, proofread the research project, tips & tricks for doing a research project.

The first step towards doing a research project is choosing a relevant topic. Many students find it difficult to select a topic for their research project since they want to research a popular but less researched topic, something which is difficult to find. Browse through the recent studies and works in your chosen field and then find the best one that you are inclined towards. It is essential to have an innate interest and passion for the topic you have chosen since it will help you work out through all the challenges and hurdles during your research.

An expert supervisor plays an essential role in mentoring the student throughout the journey of the research project. Supervisors are generally professors and scholars in a university who guide students throughout their research addressing their queries regarding the topic along with familiarising them with different research methodologies and processes. So choosing a research knowledgeable supervisor in your field of study is very important in the development of your research project.

You need to have a good grasp of the contemporary work and studies done related to your topic to find out the gaps that you can address in your research project. For this, you need to invest your time in reading the published papers related to your topic diligently. Reading a huge volume of secondary sources will add to your knowledge about the topic and also present you with different primary sources which you can look for.

Primary sources are the backbone of your research. You can look for primary sources in different archives or libraries depending on your discipline, and you can also find out about primary sources and their location from papers already published on your chosen and related topics. Make sure to find and analyse the primary sources in detail and note down your findings.

Use your notes while drafting your paper. Remember that you need to make any changes through multiple drafts before you come up with a paper worthy of commendation. Make sure to send your drafts to your supervisor for feedback and corrections and doubts, and work on the suggestions they provide on your paper.

Citations are an important part of your research project. Not putting proper citations can mark your project as plagiarized. Since universities take plagiarism quite seriously, it is better to know the proper way of citation as specified by the research project format provided by your university. You can also get in touch with your research mentor or supervisor and ask for their advice on citing the sources in your project. 

You should not skip proofreading your paper after completing it. Spelling or grammar mistakes are inevitable while working on a lengthy research project and therefore it is necessary to check it multiple times for such errors. Re-reading your draft can not only help you in making it better by fixing the errors, but also you may identify any gaps or issues in the paper that you can rectify. 

Now that you are familiar with the process of doing a research project, here are some more tips and tricks that you might find useful:

• Create a schedule mapping down every step of your research and adhere to the same.
• Research your topic online and offline to know about the different sources you can explore.
• List down all the sources, both primary and secondary that you consulted for your project as this will help you in adding the citations. 
• Always keep notes to write new ideas and findings of your research as you can easily use them later to add to your project.
• Stay in touch with your supervisor throughout the course of your research project as they can help you efficiently tackle all the challenges and problems and make your thesis as comprehensive as possible.

Ans. These types of questions you can ask in a research project What exactly do you want to study? What is your research question or questions? Why is it worth studying? What is the purpose or significance of your study? Does the proposed study have practical significance?

Ans. There should be no uncertainty in the research topic. Clarity also requires that the research topic be goal-oriented and that it establish the entire research methodology. Half of the formula for good research is a clearly defined and well-phrased research topic.

Ans. Research is the process of looking for solutions to a certain issue. It can be carried out to comprehend a phenomenon, observe behaviour, or test a theory, among other things. Systematic research is carried out, adding to the corpus of knowledge and bolstering numerous theories.

Thus, carrying out a research project is not everyone’s cup of tea as it will need meticulous studying and preparation to finally accomplish it as you have hypothesized. Planning to pursue a research degree? Our Study Abroad experts are here to help you find the best course and university along with sorting out the admission process to ensure that you send a winning application. Sign up for a free session with us today!

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Methodology

Research Methods | Definitions, Types, Examples

Research methods are specific procedures for collecting and analyzing data. Developing your research methods is an integral part of your research design . When planning your methods, there are two key decisions you will make.

First, decide how you will collect data . Your methods depend on what type of data you need to answer your research question :

• Qualitative vs. quantitative : Will your data take the form of words or numbers?
• Primary vs. secondary : Will you collect original data yourself, or will you use data that has already been collected by someone else?
• Descriptive vs. experimental : Will you take measurements of something as it is, or will you perform an experiment?

Second, decide how you will analyze the data .

• For quantitative data, you can use statistical analysis methods to test relationships between variables.
• For qualitative data, you can use methods such as thematic analysis to interpret patterns and meanings in the data.

Table of contents

Methods for collecting data, examples of data collection methods, methods for analyzing data, examples of data analysis methods, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research methods.

Data is the information that you collect for the purposes of answering your research question . The type of data you need depends on the aims of your research.

Qualitative vs. quantitative data

Your choice of qualitative or quantitative data collection depends on the type of knowledge you want to develop.

For questions about ideas, experiences and meanings, or to study something that can’t be described numerically, collect qualitative data .

If you want to develop a more mechanistic understanding of a topic, or your research involves hypothesis testing , collect quantitative data .

You can also take a mixed methods approach , where you use both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Primary vs. secondary research

Primary research is any original data that you collect yourself for the purposes of answering your research question (e.g. through surveys , observations and experiments ). Secondary research is data that has already been collected by other researchers (e.g. in a government census or previous scientific studies).

If you are exploring a novel research question, you’ll probably need to collect primary data . But if you want to synthesize existing knowledge, analyze historical trends, or identify patterns on a large scale, secondary data might be a better choice.

Descriptive vs. experimental data

In descriptive research , you collect data about your study subject without intervening. The validity of your research will depend on your sampling method .

In experimental research , you systematically intervene in a process and measure the outcome. The validity of your research will depend on your experimental design .

To conduct an experiment, you need to be able to vary your independent variable , precisely measure your dependent variable, and control for confounding variables . If it’s practically and ethically possible, this method is the best choice for answering questions about cause and effect.

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Your data analysis methods will depend on the type of data you collect and how you prepare it for analysis.

Data can often be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. For example, survey responses could be analyzed qualitatively by studying the meanings of responses or quantitatively by studying the frequencies of responses.

Qualitative analysis methods

Qualitative analysis is used to understand words, ideas, and experiences. You can use it to interpret data that was collected:

• From open-ended surveys and interviews , literature reviews , case studies , ethnographies , and other sources that use text rather than numbers.
• Using non-probability sampling methods .

Qualitative analysis tends to be quite flexible and relies on the researcher’s judgement, so you have to reflect carefully on your choices and assumptions and be careful to avoid research bias .

Quantitative analysis methods

Quantitative analysis uses numbers and statistics to understand frequencies, averages and correlations (in descriptive studies) or cause-and-effect relationships (in experiments).

You can use quantitative analysis to interpret data that was collected either:

• During an experiment .
• Using probability sampling methods .

Because the data is collected and analyzed in a statistically valid way, the results of quantitative analysis can be easily standardized and shared among researchers.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Chi square test of independence
• Statistical power
• Descriptive statistics
• Degrees of freedom
• Pearson correlation
• Null hypothesis
• Double-blind study
• Case-control study
• Research ethics
• Data collection
• Hypothesis testing
• Structured interviews

Research bias

• Hawthorne effect
• Unconscious bias
• Recall bias
• Halo effect
• Self-serving bias
• Information bias

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

In mixed methods research , you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question .

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project . It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.

Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data (for example, experiments, surveys , and statistical tests ).

In shorter scientific papers, where the aim is to report the findings of a specific study, you might simply describe what you did in a methods section .

In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation , you will probably include a methodology section , where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.

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The Human Genome Project (HGP) is one of the greatest scientific feats in history. The project was a voyage of biological discovery led by an international group of researchers looking to comprehensively study all of the DNA (known as a genome) of a select set of organisms. Launched in October 1990 and completed in April 2003, the Human Genome Project’s signature accomplishment – generating the first sequence of the human genome – provided fundamental information about the human blueprint, which has since accelerated the study of human biology and improved the practice of medicine.

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Last updated: September 7, 2023

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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2.1.4: Components of a Research Project

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Describe useful strategies to employ when searching for literature.
• Describe why sociologists review prior literature and how they organize their literature reviews.
• Identify the main sections contained in scholarly journal articles.
• Identify and describe the major components researchers need to plan for when designing a research project.

In this section, we’ll examine the most typical components that make up a research project, bringing in a few additional components to those we have already discussed. Keep in mind that our purpose at this stage is simply to provide a general overview of research design. The specifics of each of the following components will vary from project to project. Further, the stage of a project at which each of these components comes into play may vary. In later chapters, we will consider more specifically how these components work differently depending on the research method being employed.

Searching for Literature

Familiarizing yourself with research that has already been conducted on your topic is one of the first stages of conducting a research project and is crucial for coming up with a good research design. But where to start? How to start? In  Chapter 1.3 "Beginning a Research Project" , you learned about some of the most common databases that house information about published sociological research. As you search for literature, you may have to be fairly broad in your search for articles.

I’m guessing you may feel you’ve heard enough about electronic gadget addiction in this chapter, so let’s consider a different example here. On my campus, much to the chagrin of a group of student smokers, smoking was recently banned. These students were so upset by the idea that they would no longer be allowed to smoke on university grounds that they staged several smoke-outs during which they gathered in populated areas around campus and enjoyed a puff or two together.

A student in my research methods class wanted to understand what motivated this group of students to engage in activism centered around what she perceived to be, in this age of smoke-free facilities, a relatively deviant act. Were the protesters otherwise politically active? How much effort and coordination had it taken to organize the smoke-outs? The student researcher began her research by attempting to familiarize herself with the literature on her topic. Yet her search in Sociological Abstracts for “college student activist smoke-outs,” yielded no results. Concluding there was no prior research on her topic, she informed me that she would need an alternative assignment to the  annotated bibliography  I required since there was no literature for her to review. How do you suppose I responded to this news? What went wrong with this student’s search for literature?

In her first attempt, the student had been too narrow in her search for articles. But did that mean she was off the hook for completing the annotated bibliography assignment? Absolutely not. Instead, she went back to Sociological Abstracts and searched again using different combinations of search terms. Rather than searching for “college student activist smoke-outs” she tried, among other sets of terms, “college student activism.” This time her search yielded a great many articles. Of course, they were not focused on prosmoking activist efforts, but they were focused on her population of interest, college students, and on her broad topic of interest, activism. I suggested that reading articles on college student activism might give her some idea about what other researchers have found in terms of what motivates college students to become involved in activist efforts. I also suggested she could play around with her search terms and look for research on activism centered on other sorts of activities that are perceived by some as deviant, such as marijuana use or veganism. In other words, she needed to be broader in her search for articles.

While this student found success by broadening her search for articles, her reading of those articles needed to be narrower than her search. Once she identified a set of articles to review by searching broadly, it was time to remind herself of her specific research focus: college student activist smoke-outs. Keeping in mind her particular research interest while reviewing the literature gave her the chance to think about how the theories and findings covered in prior studies might or might not apply to her particular point of focus. For example, theories on what motivates activists to get involved might tell her something about the likely reasons the students  she  planned to study got involved. At the same time, those theories might not cover all the particulars of student participation in smoke-outs. Thinking about the different theories then gave the student the opportunity to focus her research plans and even to develop a few hypotheses about what she thought she was likely to find.

Reviewing the Literature

Developing an annotated bibliography is often one of the early steps that researchers take as they begin to familiarize themselves with prior research on their topic. A second step involves a literature review in which a researcher positions his or her work within the context of prior scholarly work in the area. A literature review addresses the following matters: What sorts of questions have other scholars asked about this topic? What do we already know about this topic? What questions remain? As the researcher answers these questions, he or she synthesizes what is contained in the literature, possibly organizing prior findings around themes that are relevant to his or her particular research focus.

I once advised an undergraduate student who conducted a research project on speciesism, the belief that some species are superior to or have more value and rights than others. Her research question was “Why and how do humans construct divisions between themselves and animals?” This student organized her review of literature around the two parts of her research question: the why and the how. In the “why” section of her literature review, she described prior research that addressed questions of why humans are sometimes speciesist. She organized subsections around the three most common answers that were presented in the scholarly literature. She used the same structure in the “how” section of her literature review, arranging subsections around the answers posed in previous literature about  how  humans construct divisions between themselves and animals. This organizational scheme helped readers understand what we already know about the topic and what theories we rely on to help make sense of the topic. In addition, by also highlighting what we still don’t know, it helped the student set the stage for her own empirical research on the topic.

The preceding discussion about how to organize a review of scholarly literature assumes that we all know how to read scholarly literature. Yes, yes, I understand that you must know how to read. But reading scholarly articles can be a bit more challenging than reading a textbook. Here are a few pointers about how to do it successfully. First, it is important to understand the various sections that are typically contained in scholarly journals’ reports of empirical research. One of the most important and easiest to spot sections of a journal article is its  abstract , the short paragraph at the beginning of an article that summarizes the author’s research question, methods used to answer the question, and key findings. The abstract may also give you some idea about the theoretical proclivities of the author. As a result, reading the abstract gives you both a framework for understanding the rest of the article and the punch line. It tells you what the author(s) found and whether the article is relevant to your area of inquiry.

After the abstract, most journal articles will contain the following sections (although exact section names are likely to vary): introduction, literature review, methodology, findings, and discussion. Of course, there will also be a list of references cited,Lists of references cited are a useful source for finding additional literature in an area. and there may be a few tables, figures, or appendices at the end of the article as well. While you should get into the habit of familiarizing yourself with articles you wish to cite  in their entirety , there are strategic ways to read journal articles that can make them a little easier to digest. Once you have read the abstract and determined that this is an article you’d like to read in full, read through the discussion section at the end of the article next. Because your own review of literature is likely to emphasize findings from previous literature, you should make sure that you have a clear idea about what those findings are. Reading an article’s discussion section helps you understand what the author views as the study’s major findings and how the author perceives those findings to relate to other research.

As you read through the rest of the article, think about the elements of research design that we have covered in this chapter. What approach does the researcher take? Is the research exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory? Is it inductive or deductive? Idiographic or nomothetic? Qualitative or quantitative? What claims does the author make about causality? What are the author’s units of analysis and observation? Use what you have learned in this chapter about the promise and potential pitfalls associated with each of these research elements to help you responsibly read and understand the articles you review. Future chapters of this text will address other elements of journal articles, including choices about measurement, sampling, and research method. As you learn about these additional items, you will increasingly gain more knowledge that you can apply as you read and critique the scholarly literature in your area of inquiry.

Additional Important Components

Thinking about the overarching goals of your research project and finding and reviewing the existing literature on your topic are two of the initial steps you’ll take when designing a research project. Forming a clear research question, as discussed in  Chapter 1.3 "Beginning a Research Project" , is another crucial step. There are a number of other important research design components you’ll need to consider, and we will discuss those here.

At the same time that you work to identify a clear research question, you will probably also think about the overarching goals of your research project. Will it be exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory? Will your approach be idiographic or nomothetic, inductive or deductive? How you design your project might also be determined in part by whether you aim for your research to have some direct application or if your goal is to contribute more generally to sociological knowledge about your topic. Next, think about what your units of analysis and units of observation will be. These will help you identify the key concepts you will study. Once you have identified those concepts, you’ll need to decide how to define them, and how you’ll  know  that you’re observing them when it comes time to collect your data. Defining your concepts, and knowing them when you see them, has to do with conceptualization and operationalization. Of course, you also need to know what approach you will take to collect your data. Thus identifying your research method is another important part of research design. You also need to think about who your research participants will be and what larger group(s) they may represent. Last, but certainly not least, you should consider any potential ethical concerns that could arise during the course of your research project. These concerns might come up during your data collection, but they might also arise when you get to the point of analyzing or sharing your research results.

Decisions about the various research components do not necessarily occur in sequential order. In fact, you may have to think about potential ethical concerns even before zeroing in on a specific research question. Similarly, the goal of being able to make generalizations about your population of interest could shape the decisions you make about your method of data collection. Putting it all together, the following list shows some of the major components you’ll need to consider as you design your research project:

• Research question
• Literature review
• Research strategy (idiographic or nomothetic, inductive or deductive)
• Research goals (basic or applied)
• Units of analysis and units of observation
• Key concepts (conceptualization and operationalization)
• Method of data collection
• Research participants (sample and population)
• Ethical concerns

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• When identifying and reading relevant literature, be broad in your search  for  articles, but be narrower in your reading  of  articles.
• Writing an annotated bibliography can be a helpful first step to familiarize yourself with prior research in your area of interest.
• Literature reviews summarize and synthesize prior research.
• Literature reviews are typically organized around substantive ideas that are relevant to one’s research question rather than around individual studies or article authors.
• When designing a research project, be sure to think about, plan for, and identify a research question, a review of literature, a research strategy, research goals, units of analysis and units of observation, key concepts, method(s) of data collection, population and sample, and potential ethical concerns.
• Find and read a complete journal article that addresses a topic that is of interest to you (perhaps using Sociological Abstracts, which is introduced in  Chapter 3.1 "Beginning a Research Project" ). In four to eight sentences, summarize the author’s research question, theoretical framing, methods used, and major findings. Reread the article, and see how close you were in reporting these key elements. What did you understand and remember best? What did you leave out? What reading strategies may have helped you better recall relevant details from the article?
• Using the example of students’ electronic gadget addictions, design a hypothetical research project by identifying a plan for each of the nine components of research design that are presented in this section.

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Future home of Bell Labs gets approval for construction

The project known as the ”HELIX innovation center” received approval from New Brunswick Planning Board last week to begin the second phase of construction on a massive 11-story research center that will be the new home of Nokia Bell Labs one day. The New Jersey Health + Life Science Exchange, or HELIX, is a $750 million research complex that will consist of three buildings in the city’s downtown on the site of the former Ferren Mall. On April 8, the city Planning Board granted New Brunswick 2 Urban Renewal Associates...

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Formulating a researchable question: A critical step for facilitating good clinical research

Sadaf aslam.

Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Patricia Emmanuel

Developing a researchable question is one of the challenging tasks a researcher encounters when initiating a project. Both, unanswered issues in current clinical practice or when experiences dictate alternative therapies may provoke an investigator to formulate a clinical research question. This article will assist researchers by providing step-by-step guidance on the formulation of a research question. This paper also describes PICO (population, intervention, control, and outcomes) criteria in framing a research question. Finally, we also assess the characteristics of a research question in the context of initiating a research project.

INTRODUCTION

A researchable question is an uncertainty about a problem that can be challenged, examined, and analyzed to provide useful information.[ 1 ] A successful research project depends upon how well an investigator formulates the research question based on the problems faced in day-to-day research activities and clinical practice. The underlying questions of a research project provide important information to decide whether the topic is relevant, researchable, and significant. A well-formulated research question needs extreme specificity and preciseness which guides the implementation of the project keeping in mind the identification of variables and population of interest. Here we will present a clinical scenario and see how clinical questions arise and help us in finding the evidence to answer our question.

FORMULATING THE RESEARCH QUESTION

A 2-year-old boy presents in an outpatient clinic with fever and severe pain in his right ear. He has a history of recurrent ear infections, and his mother expresses a concern that he has been on the antibiotic amoxicillin for the past few weeks. She is worried about the consequences of the long-term antibiotic use. She is also concerned about the outcome associated with recurrent ear infections. She wants to know if the prescribed amoxicillin is effective, or it can be substituted with another antibiotic because of its side effects such as frequent diarrhea.

Several questions arise from this case which can be broadly classified into background and foreground questions. The general questions about a clinical problem or a disease are called “Background Questions.”[ 2 ] These questions generally ask what, when, how, and where about the disease, disorder, or treatment for instance, “What is otitis media?” or “How does amoxicillin work?” etc. These types of questions can be answered by going through review articles or text books.

The patient-oriented questions involving interpretation of a therapy or disease and consideration of risk vs. benefit for a patient or a group of patient are called “Foreground Questions.”[ 2 ] These types of complex clinical questions are best answered by primary or pre-assessed studies in the literature. These questions mostly compare the two, either two drugs or treatments or two diagnostic methods, etc.

The PICO (population, intervention, control, and outcomes) format [ Table 1 ] is considered a widely known strategy for framing a “foreground” research question.[ 3 ] Sackett et al . pointed out that breaking the question into four components will facilitate the identification of relevant information.

Considering PICO and FINER criteria for developing a research question[ 3 , 5 ]

Population or problem - addressing a specific population, its important characteristics and demographic information. From the above case, you can identify pediatric population with otitis media, the age range, sex, presenting complaint, and history.

Intervention or treatment of interest - the intervention can be a treatment, procedure, diagnostic test, and risk or prognostic factors. In this case, the intervention will be your plan to treat the patient which can be a new therapy, a diagnostic test, prognostic factor, or a procedure. For example, based on your observation in clinic, cefuroxime is another better treatment option as compared to amoxicillin in treating otitis media but you are not sure about its efficacy in pediatric population with otitis media.

Comparator or control -when a new therapy is compared with the existing one.

Outcome - is the effect of the intervention. For example, its effectiveness in controlling pain. Therefore, the outcome in the above case can be the relief of pain, the resolution of infection, or decreasing the risk of developing resistance. A good primary outcome should be easily quantifiable, specific, valid, reproducible, and appropriate to your research question.[ 4 ]

In a typical clinical setting, a clinician needs to know about background and foreground questions depending upon the experience about a particular disease and therapy. Once background questions are answered, more complex questions are addressed. The clinical questions arise from the central issues in a clinical work.[ 2 ] For example, identifying causes or risk factors (etiological questions), comparing diagnostic tests based on sensitivity and specificity (diagnostic query), identifying best treatment options (therapeutic question), and outcome of the treatment (prognostic question).

After determining a foreground question, the PICO approach is followed. Dissecting the question into parts makes it easy and searchable. As evident in this case, there are several relevant questions, for example: what are the outcomes associated with recurrent ear infection, what are the possible effects of long-term use of antibiotic, and what are the harms associated with current treatment? Now if you gather all the information from PICO approach, the following researchable questions can be formulated.

In children with acute otitis media (P), is cefuroxime (I) effective in reducing the duration of symptoms (O) as compared to amoxicillin (C)?

In children suffering from otitis media, will cefuroxime result in the improvement of symptoms and reduction in developing resistance?

Does treatment with amoxicillin increase the risk of developing resistance in children suffering from otitis media?

Does surgical procedure has better outcome for the treatment of otitis media in children after repeated antibiotic therapy?

From the above case, we have formulated multiple questions based on our patient’s illness and concerns. Now we can use the strategy of “selecting” the best question.[ 2 ] For example, which question has more significance for the patient’s well-being, which question is relevant to our knowledge needs and which question might lead to interesting answers for our patients and clinical query? Further, we need to consider the feasibility of finding the evidence in a short period.

ASSESSING THE RESEARCH QUESTION IN THE CONTEXT OF A STUDY DESIGN

As proposed by Hulley et al . [ Table 1 ], a research question should be formulated keeping in mind the FINER (feasible, interesting, novel, ethical, and relevant) criteria[ 5 ] and that the answer should fill gaps in the existing knowledge. The following points should be considered while assessing a research question.

Determining the required resources

The feasibility of conducting a research project is based on the research question and should be considered early in the process in order to avoid waste of resources and intellectual energy. This is sometimes difficult for a new investigator and they need guidance from their mentors.[ 4 ]

• Consider doing a pilot or proof of concept study to asses the feasibility;
• Consult a biostatistician early in the project in order to choose less costly design and common outcomes;
• Consider feasibility of enrolling the intended number of subjects from the population of your interest. Also, consider expanding your inclusion criteria and modifying exclusion criteria if it is difficult to enroll the intended number; and
• Consider cost of each element of the study design, research staff, and resources.

Significance of making it interesting and relevant

An important question may not seem interesting the way it is presented. It is a challenge to present a research question clearly and engage the interest and attention of the reviewers. Research is too much work to not have a passion for what you are investigating. You will have more support for your study, and it will be easier to publish if the topic is novel and also interests your collaborators, colleagues, and the community at large. It is important to pursue a research question with a passion of getting the truth out of the matter.[ 5 ] This is how we all perceive research; commitment to a high-quality systematic and unbiased completion of an innovative project. If your question can explain a given problem while pointing toward a specific aspect which is missing then your project can get a great deal of support.

Conducting literature review

The innovation of any research question is determined by a thorough literature search. Any replication of the study already existing in the literature is not worth repeating as it is. Depending upon the research question, sometimes the study can be replicated if your question approaches an existing problem in a refreshing way. This can be achieved by using a different populations, different techniques, new conceptual approaches, or linking two different studies in which outcomes did not solve the problem.[ 5 ] Once a preliminary question has been formulated, literature search should be done to find out what is known or unknown about the topic. The goal of the literature review is to determine what research has been conducted on the topic of interest? and how has it been conducted? and what are the gaps in the knowledge?. It is recommended to use PubMed, MedlinePlus, CINAHL, or Web of Science as the main search databases, but other databases can be used as well. PubMed clinical query is an easy and user-friendly database to search for evidence related to clinical practice. This also provides information to search MEDLINE by doing categorical searches, for example, therapeutic, diagnostic, etiological, and prognostic. The American College of Physicians (ACP) and clinical evidence from BMJ Publishing Group are excellent systems to find evidence on therapeutic questions. Other search engines such as OVID has a large selection of texts and journals which provides access to other databases such as Cochrane library in getting full text articles and systematic reviews. Gray et al . suggested 4 Ss for literature review: Systems : use of comprehensive resources, Synopses : extracting high-quality studies and abstracts, Syntheses: systematic reviews, and Studies : original research studies.[ 6 ] In the hierarchy of evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews are considered the best method for evidence. Systematic reviews are rigorous methods of collecting and synthesizing the results of many high-quality studies. Conducting a thorough literature search also helps in finding information on the methodology, calculating the sample size, and also the type of analysis as we are looking to find a difference. This information is necessary to help structure a new study and to identify gaps in the knowledge base of the scientific community.

Refining research question

A focused research question leads to a systematic planning of a research project. The difficulty in framing a research question is not due to the lack of ideas. The challenge is to transform a novel research question into a valid study design which is the next step in refining a research question.

Asking a well-formulated research question is a starting point in conducting a quality research project and in evidence-based clinical practice. The framework presented in this paper can be helpful for a clinician to formulate a question and search for an answer and for a researcher to develop a new research project. The classical approach is to identify a research question followed by a thorough literature search keeping in mind the PICO and FINER criteria. If it is a well-defined research question, it will lead to an appropriate study design and methodology. Discussing your research question with knowledgeable peers, department chair, mentor, and the biostatistician from the start will lead to the completion of a successful project. Other steps such as type and phase of the clinical trial, budget, informed consent, sites, resource constraints of both personnel and facilities, and timeline should also be considered while formulating a research question. We have introduced the concept of background and foreground questions and also the types of different questions that can arise (therapy, harm, diagnosis, and prognosis). We have described several strategies here while highlighting the major steps that will help investigators in framing a question with the goal of finding an answer based on evidence or initiation of a new research project. It is always good to focus on a single research question based on its relevance to patient’s health or one primary objective to drive the study design.[ 4 ] Once we have formulated our research question, we need to keep track of the progress toward finding an appropriate answer and then finally applying the results to a specific patient population. In short, a researchable question is what leads toward the facts rather than opinion[ 7 ] and is clearly linked to the overall research project goal.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. J.K Kosambiya, Dr. Eknath Naik, and Dr. Ambuj Kumar for their time in reviewing the paper and providing useful insights.

Source of Support: Nil

Conflict of Interest: None declared.

Future home of Bell Labs gets approval for construction

T he project known as the ”HELIX innovation center” received approval from New Brunswick Planning Board last week to begin the second phase of construction on a massive 11-story research center that will be the new home of Nokia Bell Labs one day.

The New Jersey Health + Life Science Exchange , or HELIX, is a $750 million research complex that will consist of three buildings in the city’s downtown on the site of the former Ferren Mall. On April 8, the city Planning Board granted New Brunswick 2 Urban Renewal Associates preliminary and final site plan approval and major subdivision approval on the plan to build a towering 415,000-square-foot building that will be home to state-of-the art offices and research spaces.

The applicant New Brunswick 2 Urban Renewal Associates is a subsidiary of SJP Properties, which is heading development of the site with community support provided by nonprofit urban real estate development company New Brunswick Development Corporation, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and the city of New Brunswick.

Officials said the project and tenant Nokia Bell Labs will be a good fit for the city.

“I appreciate the historical and utilitarian context of this project, and the economic impact that it’s going to have on the city, as well as the social engagement that it’s going to bring to our community,” said Councilwoman Suzanne Sicora Ludwig before last week’s vote.

The board unanimously approved the project.

Nokia’s research arm, Nokia Bell Labs , announced in December it will leave its historic headquarters i n Murray Hill over the next five years and relocate to the new tech hub.

Murray Hill, a section of Berkeley Heights and New Providence, has been the home of Bell Labs for more than 80 years . The sprawling Murray Hill campus on Mountain Avenue is described by former employees with the same fondness college graduates describe their alma maters.

Spread across 240 acres, the country club-like setting served as the headquarters for a historic company whose researchers helped earn 10 Nobel Prizes, five Turing Awards for computer science breakthroughs and more than 20,000 patents.

“When we decided to move, it wasn’t taken lightly,” said Matthew Corliss, director of strategy and technology for Nokia.

“We cast a wide net when we looked for a home. We looked at 25 places in New Jersey and beyond. And in New Brunswick we found a home that will meet not only the technology needs that we have for the facility, but also the environment here close to academia, a thriving venture environment, and so we want to be a part of that, we want to be plugged into that going forward,” Corliss said during the April 8 meeting.

The new facility, which will break ground in 2025, is the second in a series of three new buildings expected to change downtown New Brunswick, developers said.

Construction is already underway on the first HELIX building — a 12-story tower and plaza, housing the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, translational researchers, innovation spaces, and amenities.

“I don’t believe that it’s hyperbole to suggest the historic significance of this application and this project,” said Christopher Paladino, president of New Brunswick Development Corporation. “This project is an opportunity to unlock the entrepreneurial spirit of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Dr. Waksman Rutgers, [David] Sarnoff, Claude Shannon from Bell Labs, for the next generation.”

The first two phases of the project are already creating thousands of construction jobs, Paladino said.

Developers said they plan to finish building the new Bell Labs headquarters by January 2028.

Bell Labs intends to open a technology showcase in the building’s lobby for the public to view past innovations, “but also see what we’re working on towards the future,” said Corliss, director of strategy and technology for Nokia.

Bell Labs began in 1925 as the Bell Telephone Laboratories, a science and communication research arm of the Bell system with ownership evenly split between AT&T and Western Electric.

At its height, Bell Labs was filled with scientists doing groundbreaking research in Holmdel, Murray Hill and other locations. But the company eventually went through numerous ownership changes.

In the 1980s, AT&T Technologies took over, according to the Nokia Bell Labs website . In 1996, AT&T spun off most of Bell Laboratories and its equipment manufacturing business into Lucent Technologies.

Following a merger in 2007, Bell Laboratories and the former research and innovations division of Alcatel were combined into a single organization. And in 2016, Nokia acquired Alctael-Lucent, merging Bell Labs and Nokia’s research arm.

The third phase of the HELIX project will involve development of a mixed-use, high-rise building, incorporating additional office space and 220 housing units, according to the developers. That development is expected to go before the city planning board by the end of the year.

The HELIX was the first project to get a tax credit from the board of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority through the Aspire program. Created under the New Jersey Economic Recovery Act of 2020, Aspire is a gap financing program meant to support commercial, industrial, mixed-use, and residential real estate development projects, with an emphasis on underserved communities.

The HELIX project was given a $271 million tax credit through the Aspire program.

The HELIX innovation project also involves a payment in lieu of taxes agreement, or PILOT. The city approved an agreement last year with NJ Innovation Associates Urban Renewal, a subsidiary of New Brunswick Development Corporation.

Under the terms of the agreement, the New Brunswick Development Company is paying $1.4 million to the city annually in addition to the $23 million it is paying for the property, according to public meeting documents and videos.

Last year, the Rutgers Board of Governors approved its own funding plan for Rutgers’ $567 million portion of the HELIX project.

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