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  • v.20; 2019 Oct 25

Managing Ideas, People, and Projects: Organizational Tools and Strategies for Researchers

Samuel pascal levin.

1 Beverly, MA 01915, USA

Michael Levin

2 Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, Suite 4600, 200 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155-4243, USA

Primary Investigators at all levels of their career face a range of challenges related to optimizing their activity within the constraints of deadlines and productive research. These range from enhancing creative thought and keeping track of ideas to organizing and prioritizing the activity of the members of the group. Numerous tools now exist that facilitate the storage and retrieval of information necessary for running a laboratory to advance specific project goals within associated timelines. Here we discuss strategies and tools/software that, together or individually, can be used as is or adapted to any size scientific laboratory. Specific software products, suggested use cases, and examples are shown across the life cycle from idea to publication. Strategies for managing the organization of, and access to, digital information and planning structures can greatly facilitate the efficiency and impact of an active scientific enterprise. The principles and workflow described here are applicable to many different fields.

Graphical Abstract

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Information Systems; Knowledge Management

Introduction

Researchers, at all stages of their careers, are facing an ever-increasing deluge of information and deadlines. Additional difficulties arise when one is the Principal Investigator (PI) of those researchers: as group size and scope of inquiry increases, the challenges of managing people and projects and the interlocking timelines, finances, and information pertaining to those projects present a continuous challenge. In the immediate term, there are experiments to do, papers and grants to write, and presentations to construct, in addition to teaching and departmental duties. At the same time, however, the PI must make strategic decisions that will impact the future direction(s) of the laboratory and its personnel. The integration of deep creative thought together with the practical steps of implementing a research plan and running a laboratory on a day-to-day basis is one of the great challenges of the modern scientific enterprise. Especially difficult is the fact that attention needs to span many orders of scale, from decisions about which problems should be pursued by the group in the coming years and how to tackle those problems to putting out regular “fires” associated with the minutiae of managing people and limited resources toward the committed goals.

The planning of changes in research emphasis, hiring, grant-writing, etc. likewise occur over several different timescales. The optimization of resources and talent toward impactful goals requires the ability to organize, store, and rapidly access information that is integrated with project planning structures. Interestingly, unlike other fields such as business, there are few well-known, generally accepted guidelines for best practices available to researchers. Here we lay out a conceptual taxonomy of the life cycle of a project, from brainstorming ideas through to a final deliverable product. We recommend methods and software/tools to facilitate management of concurrent research activities across the timeline. The goal is to optimize the organization, storage, and access to the necessary information in each phase, and, crucially, to facilitate the interconnections between static information, action plans, and work product across all phases. We believe that the earlier in the career of a researcher such tools are implemented and customized, the more positive impact they will exert on the productivity of their enterprise.

This overview is intended for anyone who is conducting research or academic scholarship. It consists of a number of strategies and software recommendations that can be used together or independently (adapted to suit a given individual's or group's needs). Some of the specific software packages mentioned are only usable on Apple devices, but similar counterparts exist in the Windows and Linux ecosystems; these are indicated in Table 1 (definitions of special terms are given in Table 2 ). These strategies were developed (and have been continuously updated) over the last 20 years based on the experiences of the Levin group and those of various collaborators and other productive researchers. Although very specific software and platforms are indicated, to facilitate the immediate and practical adoption by researchers at all levels, the important thing is the strategies illustrated by the examples. As software and hardware inevitably change over the next few years, the fundamental principles can be readily adapted to newer products.

Software Packages and Alternatives

A Glossary of Special Terms

Basic Principles

Although there is a huge variety of different types of scientific enterprises, most of them contain one or more activities that can be roughly subsumed by the conceptual progression shown in Figure 1 . This life cycle progresses from brainstorming and ideation through planning, execution of research, and then creation of work products. Each stage requires unique activities and tools, and it is crucial to establish a pipeline and best practices that enable the results of each phase to effectively facilitate the next phase. All of the recommendations given below are designed to support the following basic principles:

  • • Information should be easy to find and access, so as to enable the user to have to remember as little as possible—this keeps the mind free to generate new, creative ideas. We believe that when people get comfortable with not having to remember any details and are completely secure in the knowledge that the information has been offloaded to a dependable system and will be there when they need it, a deeper, improved level of thinking can be achieved.
  • • Information should be both organized hierarchically (accessible by drill-down search through a rational structure) and searchable by keywords.
  • • Information should be reachable from anywhere in the world (but secure and access restricted). Choose software that includes a cell phone/tablet platform client.
  • • No information should ever be lost—the systems are such that additional information does not clog up or reduce efficiency of use and backup strategies ensure disaster robustness; therefore, it is possible to save everything.
  • • Software tools optimized for specific management tasks should be used; select those tools based on interoperability, features, and the ability to export into common formats (such as XML) in case it becomes expedient someday to switch to a newer product.
  • • One's digital world should be organized into several interlocking categories, which utilize different tools: activity (to-dos, projects, research goals) and knowledge (static information).
  • • One's activity should be hierarchically organized according to a temporal scale, ranging from immediate goals all the way to career achievement objectives and core mission.
  • • Storage of planning data should allow integration of plans with the information needed to implement them (using links to files and data in the various tools).
  • • There should be no stored paper—everything should be obtained and stored in a digital form (or immediately digitized, using one of the tools described later in this document).
  • • The information management tasks described herein should not occupy so much time as to take away from actual research. When implemented correctly, they result in a net increase in productivity.

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The Life Cycle of Research Activity

Various projects occupy different places along a typical timeline. The life cycle extends from creative ideation to gathering information, to formulating a plan, to the execution for the plan, and then to producing a work product such as a grant or paper based on the results. Many of these phases necessitate feedback to a prior phase, shown in thinner arrows (for example, information discovered during a literature search or attempts to formalize the work plan may require novel brainstorming). This diagram shows the product (end result) of each phase and typical tools used to accomplish them.

These basic principles can be used as the skeleton around which specific strategies and new software products can be deployed. Whenever possible, these can be implemented via external administration services (i.e., by a dedicated project manager or administrator inside the group), but this is not always compatible with budgetary constraints, in which case they can readily be deployed by each principal investigator. The PIs also have to decide whether they plan to suggest (or insist) that other people in the group also use these strategies, and perhaps monitor their execution. In our experience, it is most essential for anyone leading a complex project or several to adopt these methods (typically, a faculty member or senior staff scientist), whereas people tightly focused on one project and with limited concurrent tasks involving others (e.g., Ph.D. students) are not essential to move toward the entire system (although, for example, the backup systems should absolutely be ensured to be implemented among all knowledge workers in the group). The following are some of the methods that have proven most effective in our own experience.

Information Technology Infrastructure

Several key elements should be pillars of your Information Technology (IT) infrastructure ( Figure 2 ). You should be familiar enough with computer technology that you can implement these yourself, as it is rare for an institutional IT department to be able to offer this level of assistance. Your primary disk should be a large (currently, ∼2TB) SSD drive or, better, a disk card (such as the 2TB SSD NVMe PCIe) for fast access and minimal waiting time. Your computer should be so fast that you spend no time (except in the case of calculations or data processing) waiting for anything—your typing and mouse movement should be the rate-limiting step. If you find yourself waiting for windows or files to open, obtain a better machine.

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Schematic of Data Flow and Storage

Three types of information: data (facts and datasets), action plans (schedules and to-do lists), and work product (documents) all interact with each other in defining a region of work space for a given research project. All of this should be hosted on a single PC (personal computer). It is accessed by a set of regular backups of several types, as well as by the user who can interact with raw files through the file system or with organized data through a variety of client applications that organize information, schedules, and email. See Table 2 for definitions of special terms.

One key element is backups—redundant copies of your data. Disks fail—it is not a question of whether your laptop or hard drive will die, but when. Storage space is inexpensive and researchers' time is precious: team members should not tolerate time lost due to computer snafus. The backup and accessibility system should be such that data are immediately recoverable following any sort of disaster; it only has to be set up once, and it only takes one disaster to realize the value of paranoia about data. This extends also to laboratory inventory systems—it is useful to keep (and back up) lists of significant equipment and reagents in the laboratory, in case they are needed for the insurance process in case of loss or damage.

The main drive should be big enough to keep all key information (not primary laboratory data, such as images or video) in one volume—this is to facilitate cloning. You should have an extra internal drive (which can be a regular disk) of the same size or bigger. Use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to set up a nightly clone operation. When the main disk fails (e.g., the night before a big grant is due), boot from the clone and your exact, functioning system is ready to go. For Macs, another internal drive set up as a Time Machine enables keeping versions of files as they change. You should also have an external drive, which is likewise a Time Machine or a clone: you can quickly unplug it and take it with you, if the laboratory has to be evacuated (fire alarm or chemical emergency) or if something happens to your computer and you need to use one elsewhere. Set a calendar reminder once a month to check that the Time Machine is accessible and can be searched and that your clone is actually updated and bootable. A Passport-type portable drive is ideal when traveling to conferences: if something happens to the laptop, you can boot a fresh (or borrowed) machine from the portable drive and continue working. For people who routinely install software or operating system updates, I also recommend getting one disk that is a clone of the entire system and applications and then set it to nightly clone the data only , leaving the operating system files unchanged. This guarantees that you have a usable system with the latest data files (useful in case an update or a new piece of software renders the system unstable or unbootable and it overwrites the regular clone before you notice the problem). Consider off-site storage. CrashPlan Pro is a reasonable choice for backing up laboratory data to the cloud. One solution for a single person's digital content is to have two extra external hard drives. One gets a clone of your office computer, and one is a clone of your home computer, and then you swap—bring the office one home and the home one to your office. Update them regularly, and keep them swapped, so that should a disaster strike one location, all of the data are available. Finally, pay careful attention (via timed reminders) to how your laboratory machines and your people's machines are being backed up; a lot of young researchers, especially those who have not been through a disaster yet, do not make backups. One solution is to have a system like CrashPlan Pro installed on everyone's machines to do automatic backup.

Another key element is accessibility of information. Everyone should be working on files (i.e., Microsoft Word documents) that are inside a Dropbox or Box folder; whatever you are working on this month, the files should be inside a folder synchronized by one of these services. That way, if anything happens to your machine, you can access your files from anywhere in the world. It is critical that whatever service is chosen, it is one that s ynchronizes a local copy of the data that live on your local machine (not simply keeps files in the cloud) —that way, you have what you need even if the internet is down or connectivity is poor. Tools that help connect to your resources while on the road include a VPN (especially useful for secure connections while traveling), SFTP (to transfer files; turn on the SFTP, not FTP, service on your office machine), and Remote Desktop (or VNC). All of these exist for cell phone or tablet devices, as well as for laptops, enabling access to anything from anywhere. All files (including scans of paper documents) should be processed by OCR (optical character recognition) software to render their contents searchable. This can be done in batch (on a schedule), by Adobe Acrobat's OCR function, which can be pointed to an entire folder of PDFs, for example, and left to run overnight. The result, especially with Apple's Spotlight feature, is that one can easily retrieve information that might be written inside a scanned document.

Here, we focus on work product and the thought process, not management of the raw data as it emerges from equipment and experimental apparatus. However, mention should be made of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), which are becoming an important aspect of research. ELNs are a rapidly developing field, because they face a number of challenges. A laboratory that abandons paper notebooks entirely has to provide computer interfaces anywhere in the facility where data might be generated; having screens, keyboards, and mice at every microscope or other apparatus station, for example, can be expensive, and it is not trivial to find an ergonomically equivalent digital substitute for writing things down in a notebook as ideas or data appear. On the other hand, keeping both paper notebooks for immediate recording, and ELNs for organized official storage, raises problems of wasted effort during the (perhaps incomplete) transfer of information from paper to the digital version. ELNs are also an essential tool to prevent loss of institutional knowledge as team members move up to independent positions. ELN usage will evolve over time as input devices improve and best practices are developed to minimize the overhead of entering meta-data. However, regardless of how primary data are acquired, the researcher will need specific strategies for transitioning experimental findings into research product in the context of a complex set of personal, institutional, and scientific goals and constraints.

Facilitating Creativity

The pipeline begins with ideas, which must be cultivated and then harnessed for subsequent implementation ( Altshuller, 1984 ). This step consists of two components: identifying salient new information and arranging it in a way that facilitates novel ideas, associations, hypotheses, and strategic plans for making impact.

For the first step, we suggest an automated weekly PubCrawler search, which allows Boolean searches of the literature. Good searches to save include ones focusing on specific keywords of interest, as well as names of specific people whose work one wants to follow. The resulting weekly email of new papers matching specific criteria complements manual searches done via ISI's Web of Science, Google Scholar, and PubMed. The papers of interest should be immediately imported into a reference manager, such as Endnote, along with useful Keywords and text in the Notes field of each one that will facilitate locating them later. Additional tools include DevonAgent and DevonSphere, which enable smart searches of web and local resources, respectively.

Brainstorming can take place on paper or digitally (see later discussion). We have noticed that the rate of influx of new ideas is increased by habituating to never losing a new idea. This can be accomplished by establishing a voicemail contact in your cell phone leading to your own office voicemail (which allows voice recordings of idea fragments while driving or on the road, hands-free) and/or setting up Endnote or a similar server-synchronized application to record (and ideally transcribe) notes. It has been our experience that the more one records ideas arising in a non-work setting, the more often they will pop up automatically. For notes or schematics written on paper during dedicated brainstorming, one tool that ensures that nothing is lost is an electronic pen. For example, the Livescribe products are well integrated with Evernote and ensure that no matter where you are, anything you write down becomes captured in a form accessible from anywhere and are safe no matter what happens to the original notebook in which they were written.

Enhancing scientific thought, creative brainstorming, and strategic planning is facilitated by the creation of mind maps: visual representations of spatial structure of links between concepts, or the mapping of planned activity onto goals of different timescales. There are many available mind map software packages, including MindNode; their goal is to enable one to quickly set down relationships between concepts with a minimum of time spent on formatting. Examples are shown in Figures 3 A and 3B. The process of creating these mind maps (which can then be put on one's website or discussed with the laboratory members) helps refine fuzzy thinking and clarifies the relationships between concepts or activities. Mind mappers are an excellent tool because their light, freeform nature allows unimpeded brainstorming and fluid changes of idea structure but at the same time forces one to explicitly test out specific arrangements of plans or ideas.

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Mind Mapping

(A and B) The task of schematizing concepts and ideas spatially based on their hierarchical relationships with each other is a powerful technique for organizing the creative thought process. Examples include (A), which shows how the different projects in our laboratory relate to each other. Importantly, it can also reveal disbalances or gaps in coverage of specific topics, as well as help identify novel relationships between sub-projects by placing them on axes (B) or even identify novel hypotheses suggested by symmetry.

(C) Relationships between the central nervous system (CNS) and regeneration, cancer, and embryogenesis. The connecting lines in black show typical projects (relationships) already being pursued by our laboratory, and the lack of a project in the space between CNS and embryogenesis suggests a straightforward hypothesis and project to examine the role of the brain in embryonic patterning.

It is important to note that mind maps can serve a function beyond explicit organization. In a good mapped structure, one can look for symmetries (revealing relationships that are otherwise not obvious) between the concepts involved. An obvious geometric pattern with a missing link or node can help one think about what could possibly go there, and often identifies new relationships or items that had not been considered ( Figure 3 C), in much the same way that gaps in the periodic table of the elements helped identify novel elements.

Organizing Information and Knowledge

The input and output of the feedback process between brainstorming and literature mining is information. Static information not only consists of the facts, images, documents, and other material needed to support a train of thought but also includes anything needed to support the various projects and activities. It should be accessible in three ways, as it will be active during all phases of the work cycle. Files should be arranged on your disk in a logical hierarchical structure appropriate to the work. Everything should also be searchable and indexed by Spotlight. Finally, some information should be stored as entries in a data management system, like Evernote or DevonThink, which have convenient client applications that make the data accessible from any device.

Notes in these systems should include useful lists and how-to's, including, for example:

  • • Names and addresses of experts for specific topics
  • • Emergency protocols for laboratory or animal habitats
  • • Common recipes/methods
  • • Lists and outlines of papers/grants on the docket
  • • Information on students, computers, courses, etc.
  • • Laboratory policies
  • • Materials and advice for students, new group members, etc.
  • • Lists of editors, and preferred media contacts
  • • Lists of Materials Transfer Agreements (MTAs), contract texts, info on IP
  • • Favorite questions for prospective laboratory members

Each note can have attachments, which include manuals, materials safety sheets, etc. DevonThink needs a little more setup but is more robust and also allows keeping the server on one's own machine (nothing gets uploaded to company servers, unlike with Evernote, which might be a factor for sensitive data). Scientific papers should be kept in a reference manager, whereas books (such as epub files and PDFs of books and manuscripts) can be stored in a Calibre library.

Email: A Distinct Kind of Information

A special case of static information is email, including especially informative and/or actionable emails from team members, external collaborators, reviewers, and funders. Because the influx of email is ever-increasing, it is important to (1) establish a good infrastructure for its management and (2) establish policies for responding to emails and using them to facilitate research. The first step is to ensure that one only sees useful emails, by training a good Bayesian spam filter such as SpamSieve. We suggest a triage system in which, at specific times of day (so that it does not interfere with other work), the Inbox is checked and each email is (1) forwarded to someone better suited to handling it, (2) responded quickly for urgent things that need a simple answer, or (3) started as a Draft email for those that require a thoughtful reply. Once a day or a couple of times per week, when circumstances permit focused thought, the Draft folder should be revisited and those emails answered. We suggest a “0 Inbox” policy whereby at the end of a day, the Inbox is basically empty, with everything either delegated, answered, or set to answer later.

We also suggest creating subfolders in the main account (keeping them on the mail server, not local to a computer, so that they can be searched and accessed from anywhere) as follows:

  • • Collaborators (emails stating what they are going to do or updating on recent status)
  • • Grants in play (emails from funding agencies confirming receipt)
  • • Papers in play (emails from journals confirming receipt)
  • • Waiting for information (emails from people for whom you are waiting for information)
  • • Waiting for miscellaneous (emails from people who you expect to do something)
  • • Waiting for reagents (emails from people confirming that they will be sending you a physical object)

Incoming emails belonging to those categories (for example, an email from an NIH program officer acknowledging a grant submission, a collaborator who emailed a plan of what they will do next, or someone who promised to answer a specific question) should be sorted from the Inbox to the relevant folder. Every couple of weeks (according to a calendar reminder), those folders should be checked, and those items that have since been dealt with can be saved to a Saved Messages folder archive, whereas those that remain can be Replied to as a reminder to prod the relevant person.

In addition, as most researchers now exchange a lot of information via email, the email trail preserves a record of relationships among colleagues and collaborators. It can be extremely useful, even years later, to be able to go back and see who said what to whom, what was the last conversation in a collaboration that stalled, who sent that special protocol or reagent and needs to be acknowledged, etc. It is imperative that you know where your email is being stored, by whom, and their policy on retention, storage space limits, search, backup, etc. Most university IT departments keep a mail server with limited storage space and will delete your old emails (even more so if you move institutions). One way to keep a permanent record with complete control is with an application called MailSteward Pro. This is a front-end client for a freely available MySQL server, which can run on any machine in your laboratory. It will import your mail and store unlimited quantities indefinitely. Unlike a mail server, this is a real database system and is not as susceptible to data corruption or loss as many other methods.

A suggested strategy is as follows. Keep every single email, sent and received. Every month (set a timed reminder), have MailSteward Pro import them into the MySQL database. Once a year, prune them from the mail server (or let IT do it on their own schedule). This allows rapid search (and then reply) from inside a mail client for anything that is less than one year old (most searches), but anything older can be found in the very versatile MailStewardPro Boolean search function. Over time, in addition to finding specific emails, this allows some informative data mining. Results of searches via MailStewardPro can be imported into Excel to, for example, identify the people with whom you most frequently communicate or make histograms of the frequency of specific keywords as a function of time throughout your career.

With ideas, mind maps, and the necessary information in hand, one can consider what aspects of the current operations plan can be changed to incorporate plans for new, impactful activity.

Organizing Tasks and Planning

A very useful strategy involves breaking down everything according to the timescales of decision-making, such as in the Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy ( Figure 4 ) ( Allen, 2015 ). Activities range from immediate (daily) tasks to intermediate goals all the way to career-scale (or life-long) mission statements. As with mind maps, being explicit about these categories not only force one to think hard about important aspects of their work, but also facilitate the transmission of this information to others on the team. The different categories are to be revisited and revised at different rates, according to their position on the hierarchy. This enables you to make sure that effort and resources are being spent according to priorities.

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Scales of Activity Planning

Activities should be assigned to a level of planning with a temporal scale, based on how often the goals of that level get re-evaluated. This ranges from core values, which can span an entire career or lifetime, all the way to tactics that guide day-to-day activities. Each level should be re-evaluated at a reasonable time frame to ensure that its goals are still consistent with the bigger picture of the level(s) above it and to help re-define the plans for the levels below it.

We also strongly recommend a yearly personal scientific retreat. This is not meant to be a vacation to “forget about work” but rather an opportunity for freedom from everyday minutiae to revisit, evaluate, and potentially revise future activity (priorities, action items) for the next few years. Every few years, take more time to re-map even higher levels on the pyramid hierarchy; consider what the group has been doing—do you like the intellectual space your group now occupies? Are your efforts having the kind of impact you realistically want to make? A formal diagram helps clarify the conceptual vision and identify gaps and opportunities. Once a correct level of activity has been identified, it is time to plan specific activities.

A very good tool for this purpose, which enables hierarchical storage of tasks and subtasks and their scheduling, is OmniFocus ( Figure 5 ). OmniFocus also enables inclusion of files (or links to files or links to Evernote notes of information) together with each Action. It additionally allows each action to be marked as “Done” once it is complete, providing not only a current action plan but a history of every past activity. Another interesting aspect is the fact that one can link individual actions with specific contexts: visualizing the database from the perspective of contexts enables efficient focus of attention on those tasks that are relevant in a specific scenario. OmniFocus allows setting reminders for specific actions and can be used for adding a time component to the activity.

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Project Planning

This figure shows a screenshot of the OmniFocus application, illustrating the nested hierarchy of projects and sub-projects, arranged into larger groups.

The best way to manage time relative to activity (and to manage the people responsible for each activity) is to construct Gantt charts ( Figure 6 ), which can be used to plan out project timelines and help keep grant and contract deliverables on time. A critical feature is that it makes dependencies explicit, so that it is clear which items have to be solved/done before something else can be accomplished. Gantt charts are essential for complex, multi-person, and/or multi-step projects with strict deadlines (such as grant deliverables and progress reports). Software such as OmniPlanner can also be used to link resources (equipment, consumables, living material, etc.) with specific actions and timelines. Updating and evaluation of a Gantt chart for a specific project should take place on a time frame appropriate to the length of the next immediate phase; weekly or biweekly is typical.

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Timeline Planning

This figure shows a screenshot of a typical Gantt chart, in OmniPlan software, illustrating the timelines of different project steps, their dependencies, and specific milestones (such as a due date for a site visit or grant submission). Note that Gantt software automatically moves the end date for each item if its subtasks' timing changes, enabling one to see a dynamically correct up-to-date temporal map of the project that adjusts for the real-world contingencies of research.

In addition to the comprehensive work plan in OmniFocus or similar, it is helpful to use a Calendar (which synchronizes to a server, such as Microsoft Office calendar with Exchange server). For yourself, make a task every day called “Monday tasks,” etc., which contains all the individual things to be accomplished (which do not warrant their own calendar reminder). First thing in the morning, one can take a look at the day's tasks to see what needs to be done. Whatever does not get done that day is to be copied onto another day's tasks. For each of the people on your team, make a timed reminder (weekly, for example, for those with whom you meet once a week) containing the immediate next steps for them to do and the next thing they are supposed to produce for your meeting. Have it with you when you meet, and give them a copy, updating the next occurrence as needed based on what was decided at the meeting to do next. This scheme makes it easy for you to remember precisely what needs to be covered in the discussion, serves as a record of the project and what you walked about with whom at any given day (which can be consulted years later, to reconstruct events if needed), and is useful to synchronize everyone on the same page (if the team member gets a copy of it after the meeting).

Writing: The Work Products

Writing, to disseminate results and analysis, is a central activity for scientists. One of the OmniFocus library's sections should contain lists of upcoming grants to write, primary papers that are being worked on, and reviews/hypothesis papers planned. Microsoft Word is the most popular tool for writing papers—its major advantage is compatibility with others, for collaborative manuscripts (its Track Changes feature is also very well implemented, enabling collaboration as a master document is passed from one co-author to another). But Scrivener should be seriously considered—it is an excellent tool that facilitates complex projects and documents because it enables WYSIWYG text editing in the context of a hierarchical structure, which allows you to simultaneously work on a detailed piece of text while seeing the whole outline of the project ( Figure 7 ).

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Writing Complex Materials

This figure shows a screenshot from the Scrivener software. The panel on the left facilitates logical and hierarchical organization of a complex writing project (by showing where in the overall structure any given text would fit), while the editing pane on the right allows the user to focus on writing a specific subsection without having to scroll through (but still being able to see) the major categories within which it must fit.

It is critical to learn to use a reference manager—there are numerous ones, including, for example, Endnote, which will make it much easier to collaborate with others on papers with many citations. One specific tip to make collaboration easier is to ask all of the co-authors to set the reference manager to use PMID Accession Number in the temporary citations in the text instead of the arbitrary record number it uses by default. That way, a document can have its bibliography formatted by any of the co-authors even if they have completely different libraries. Although some prefer collaborative editing of a Google Doc file, we have found a “master document” system useful, in which a file is passed around among collaborators by email but only one can make (Tracked) edits at a time (i.e., one person has the master doc and everyone makes edits on top of that).

One task most scientists regularly undertake is writing reviews of a specific subfield (or Whitepapers). It is often difficult, when one has an assignment to write, to remember all of the important papers that were seen in the last few years that bear on the topic. One method to remedy this is to keep standing document files, one for each topic that one might plausibly want to cover and update them regularly. Whenever a good paper is found, immediately enter it into the reference manager (with good keywords) and put a sentence or two about its main point (with the citation) into the relevant document. Whenever you decide to write the review, you will already have a file with the necessary material that only remains to be organized, allowing you to focus on conceptual integration and not combing through literature.

The life cycle of research can be viewed through the lens of the tools used at different stages. First there are the conceptual ideas; many are interconnected, and a mind mapper is used to flesh out the structure of ideas, topics, and concepts; make it explicit; and share it within the team and with external collaborators. Then there is the knowledge—facts, data, documents, protocols, pieces of information that relate to the various concepts. Kept in a combination of Endnote (for papers), Evernote (for information fragments and lists), and file system files (for documents), everything is linked and cross-referenced to facilitate the projects. Activities are action items, based on the mind map, of what to do, who is doing what, and for which purpose/grant. OmniFocus stores the subtasks within tasks within goals for the PI and everyone in the laboratory. During meetings with team members, these lists and calendar entries are used to synchronize objectives with everyone and keep the activity optimized toward the next step goals. The product—discovery and synthesis—is embodied in publications via a word processor and reference manager. A calendar structure is used to manage the trajectory from idea to publication or grant.

The tools are currently good enough to enable individual components in this pipeline. Because new tools are continuously developed and improved, we recommend a yearly overview and analysis of how well the tools are working (e.g., which component of the management plan takes the most time or is the most difficult to make invisible relative to the actual thinking and writing), coupled to a web search for new software and updated versions of existing programs within each of the categories discussed earlier.

A major opportunity exists for software companies in the creation of integrated new tools that provide all the tools in a single integrated system. In future years, a single platform will surely appear that will enable the user to visualize the same research structure from the perspective of an idea mind map, a schedule, a list of action items, or a knowledge system to be queried. Subsequent development may even include Artificial Intelligence tools for knowledge mining, to help the researcher extract novel relationships among the content. These will also need to dovetail with ELN platforms, to enable a more seamless integration of project management with primary data. These may eventually become part of the suite of tools being developed for improving larger group dynamics (e.g., Microsoft Teams). One challenge in such endeavors is ensuring the compatibility of formats and management procedures across groups and collaborators, which can be mitigated by explicitly discussing choice of software and process, at the beginning of any serious collaboration.

Regardless of the specific software products used, a researcher needs to put systems in place for managing information, plans, schedules, and work products. These digital objects need to be maximally accessible and backed up, to optimize productivity. A core principle is to have these systems be so robust and lightweight as to serve as an “external brain” ( Menary, 2010 )—to maximize creativity and deep thought by making sure all the details are recorded and available when needed. Although the above discussion focused on the needs of a single researcher (perhaps running a team), future work will address the unique needs of collaborative projects with more lateral interactions by significant numbers of participants.

Acknowledgments

We thank Joshua Finkelstein for helpful comments on a draft of the manuscript. M.L. gratefully acknowledges support by an Allen Discovery Center award from the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group (12171) and the Barton Family Foundation.

  • Allen D. Revised edition. Penguin Books; 2015. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity. [ Google Scholar ]
  • Altshuller G.S. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers; 1984. Creativity as an Exact Science: The Theory of the Solution of Inventive Problems. [ Google Scholar ]
  • Menary R. MIT Press; 2010. The Extended Mind. [ Google Scholar ]

organization when doing a research project helps you to

CCI Research Foundation

Advancing the quality of patient care and contributing to the science of perioperative nursing practice through research.

organization when doing a research project helps you to

8 Tips For Keeping Your Research Project Organized

The art of organization is essential in many facets of life, but especially important when planning a research project. It doesn’t take long to learn a lack of organization can quickly hinder the research process, along with creating unnecessary stress. Research projects are born on the basis of innovation and discovery; many start their initiatives thinking of the vision and end goal rather than the processes that are productive in getting them there. If you are like most, the initial intention to stay organized is there, but implementing these strategies proves to be more difficult than planned. To aid in this process, here are eight tips to help keep your project organized and help you achieve your research goals.

1. Choose an Outline Method 

An outline acts as a road map for your project. It helps you organize and prioritize your thoughts and information. Fortunately, there is no right or wrong way to design your outline and there are various commonly used methods. However, with much creative liberty on how to slice and dice information, one can experience choice fatigue. But do not worry! The best, most informative outline methods are those that fit with your own personal work style! For those who are more visual, utilizing a chart with boxes and connecting lines may be beneficial. Another common avenue is using bullet points in more of a linear format. The method that you choose can vary, but it is essential to stay consistent throughout your project so all information stays organized.

2. Create Goals and Deadlines

Procrastination can easily sneak up on anyone. To combat this behavior, create goals and hard deadlines that are attainable and ensure you adhere to them. To successfully implement this strategy, create a hierarchy of goals and then determine a target completion date for each goal. Estimating the time commitment of each task can be difficult, but regularly reviewing these timelines can help ensure you stay on track. 

3. Use a Calendar 

Calendars are excellent for recording significant dates on the horizon, such as mid-project reports and goal deadlines. Each researcher should utilize the calendar method that works best for them, regardless if it’s in a digital or physical format. If you are using a digital calendar, we recommend turning on your notifications so you get alerts on your approaching deadlines. For this strategy to be successful, it is important to record the relevant dates ahead of time and refer to the calendar regularly. 

4. Research Notebook

A research notebook, digital or physical, is a tool to keep all pertinent information relating to your project in one place. Dating each entry guarantees you can quickly locate necessary documents within your notebook. Most research projects occur over several months and up to several years, so you are likely to have an abundance of papers and information. Dating and consolidating documents makes your research notebook an effective and efficient tool.

5. Weekly Progress Reports 

Weekly progress reports are a simple yet useful tool for keeping your project on track and holding yourself accountable to your goals. At the end of each week, you should check and record the progress you have made and consider how it contributes to your project. Weekly reports are a great opportunity to reference the calendar, so you are prepared for what is to come.

6. Proofread

Writing is a big component of developing a research project. Organizing your project also means organizing your words and thoughts. It is important to ensure your findings are accurately represented in terms of not only your data, but grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as well. It is easy to skim over your writing and miss little mistakes here and there, which is why having attention to detail while proofreading is essential. Reading your words out loud is a great way to catch tiny errors. Also, in our digital age, downloading and using an AI-generated grammar and spelling machine is a great resource!

7. Keep a Works Cited Page for Your Research

Developing a research project not only involves experimentation and recording your findings but also seeking out information on what has been done before and exploring the impacts of similar studies. In using others’ research to supplement your project, it is important to have a citation page where you record the resources you have sought out. When you have a lot of sources, it can be easy to lose track of which ones you have recorded, which ones you want to keep, and so on. We recommend that you add your sources as you go. Doing so will allow you to maintain an organized system of information for your research project and ensure that you are giving credit where credit is due to avoid plagiarizing.

8. Backup Your Research Documents

The information you compile and the experimentations you conduct are valuable findings that are critical for your research project. With the majority of our information being digital nowadays, it is important to back up your documents – whether that be saving your information every time you update, having several copies of your work, or employing an auto-saving/cloud-based system. Making sure your research documents are backed up is a form of organization that keeps you protected against accidental deletion, technical difficulties with your device, or any other scenarios regarding the loss or damage of your work. 

Overall, research projects benefit from robust organization; utilizing these techniques will help you stay focused and on track to meeting your end goals! There are a variety of strategies you can utilize to keep your research project organized, so use what works best for you and the parameters of your work style.

Are you looking for funding for your project? The CCI Research Foundation offers funding for perioperative nursing research! Sign up to receive a reminder email when applications open. 

McLean, S. (2012). Managing Your Research Project . In Writing for Success v. 1.0. Saylor Academy .

Shaw, K. A. (2014, June). Organizing Your Research and Developing Your Research Skills . IEEE Potentials, vol. 33, issue 3, pp. 17-22 .

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11.3 Managing Your Research Project

Learning objectives.

  • Identify reasons for outlining the scope and sequence of a research project.
  • Recognize the steps of the research writing process.
  • Develop a plan for managing time and resources to complete the research project on time.
  • Identify organizational tools and strategies to use in managing the project.

The prewriting you have completed so far has helped you begin to plan the content of your research paper—your topic, research questions, and preliminary thesis. It is equally important to plan out the process of researching and writing the paper. Although some types of writing assignments can be completed relatively quickly, developing a good research paper is a complex process that takes time. Breaking it into manageable steps is crucial. Review the steps outlined at the beginning of this chapter.

Steps to Writing a Research Paper

  • Choose a topic.
  • Schedule and plan time for research and writing.
  • Conduct research.
  • Organize research
  • Draft your paper.
  • Revise and edit your paper.

You have already completed step 1. In this section, you will complete step 2. The remaining steps fall under two broad categories—the research phase of the project (steps 3 and 4) and the writing phase (steps 5 and 6). Both phases present challenges. Understanding the tasks involved and allowing enough time to complete each task will help you complete your research paper on time with a minimal amount of stress.

Planning Your Project

Each step of a research project requires time and attention. Careful planning helps ensure that you will keep your project running smoothly and produce your best work. Set up a project schedule that shows when you will complete each step. Think about how you will complete each step and what project resources you will use. Resources may include anything from library databases and word-processing software to interview subjects and writing tutors.

To develop your schedule, use a calendar and work backward from the date your final draft is due. Generally, it is wise to divide half of the available time on the research phase of the project and half on the writing phase. For example, if you have a month to work, plan for two weeks for each phase. If you have a full semester, plan to begin research early and to start writing by the middle of the term. You might think that no one really works that far ahead, but try it. You will probably be pleased with the quality of your work and with the reduction in your stress level.

As you plan, break down major steps into smaller tasks if necessary. For example, step 3, conducting research, involves locating potential sources, evaluating their usefulness and reliability, reading, and taking notes. Defining these smaller tasks makes the project more manageable by giving you concrete goals to achieve.

Jorge had six weeks to complete his research project. Working backward from a due date of May 2, he mapped out a schedule for completing his research by early April so that he would have ample time to write. Jorge chose to write his schedule in his weekly planner to help keep himself on track.

Review Jorge’s schedule. Key target dates are shaded. Note that Jorge planned times to use available resources by visiting the library and writing center and by meeting with his instructor.

Jorge's schedule

  • Working backward from the date your final draft is due, create a project schedule. You may choose to write a sequential list of tasks or record tasks on a calendar.
  • Check your schedule to be sure that you have broken each step into smaller tasks and assigned a target completion date to each key task.
  • Review your target dates to make sure they are realistic. Always allow a little more time than you think you will actually need.

Plan your schedule realistically, and consider other commitments that may sometimes take precedence. A business trip or family visit may mean that you are unable to work on the research project for a few days. Make the most of the time you have available. Plan for unexpected interruptions, but keep in mind that a short time away from the project may help you come back to it with renewed enthusiasm. Another strategy many writers find helpful is to finish each day’s work at a point when the next task is an easy one. That makes it easier to start again.

Writing at Work

When you create a project schedule at work, you set target dates for completing certain tasks and identify the resources you plan to use on the project. It is important to build in some flexibility. Materials may not be received on time because of a shipping delay. An employee on your team may be called away to work on a higher-priority project. Essential equipment may malfunction. You should always plan for the unexpected.

Staying Organized

Although setting up a schedule is easy, sticking to one is challenging. Even if you are the rare person who never procrastinates, unforeseen events may interfere with your ability to complete tasks on time. A self-imposed deadline may slip your mind despite your best intentions. Organizational tools—calendars, checklists, note cards, software, and so forth—can help you stay on track.

Throughout your project, organize both your time and your resources systematically. Review your schedule frequently and check your progress. It helps to post your schedule in a place where you will see it every day. Both personal and workplace e-mail systems usually include a calendar feature where you can record tasks, arrange to receive daily reminders, and check off completed tasks. Electronic devices such as smartphones have similar features.

Organize project documents in a binder or electronic folder, and label project documents and folders clearly. Use note cards or an electronic document to record bibliographical information for each source you plan to use in your paper. Tracking this information throughout the research process can save you hours of time when you create your references page.

Revisit the schedule you created in Note 11.42 “Exercise 1” . Transfer it into a format that will help you stay on track from day to day. You may wish to input it into your smartphone, write it in a weekly planner, post it by your desk, or have your e-mail account send you daily reminders. Consider setting up a buddy system with a classmate that will help you both stay on track.

Some people enjoy using the most up-to-date technology to help them stay organized. Other people prefer simple methods, such as crossing off items on a checklist. The key to staying organized is finding a system you like enough to use daily. The particulars of the method are not important as long as you are consistent.

Anticipating Challenges

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? You have identified a book that would be a great resource for your project, but it is currently checked out of the library. You planned to interview a subject matter expert on your topic, but she calls to reschedule your meeting. You have begun writing your draft, but now you realize that you will need to modify your thesis and conduct additional research. Or you have finally completed your draft when your computer crashes, and days of hard work disappear in an instant.

These troubling situations are all too common. No matter how carefully you plan your schedule, you may encounter a glitch or setback. Managing your project effectively means anticipating potential problems, taking steps to minimize them where possible, and allowing time in your schedule to handle any setbacks.

Many times a situation becomes a problem due only to lack of planning. For example, if a book is checked out of your local library, it might be available through interlibrary loan, which usually takes a few days for the library staff to process. Alternatively, you might locate another, equally useful source. If you have allowed enough time for research, a brief delay will not become a major setback.

You can manage other potential problems by staying organized and maintaining a take-charge attitude. Take a minute each day to save a backup copy of your work on a portable hard drive. Maintain detailed note cards and source cards as you conduct research—doing so will make citing sources in your draft infinitely easier. If you run into difficulties with your research or your writing, ask your instructor for help, or make an appointment with a writing tutor.

Identify five potential problems you might encounter in the process of researching and writing your paper. Write them on a separate sheet of paper. For each problem, write at least one strategy for solving the problem or minimizing its effect on your project.

In the workplace, documents prepared at the beginning of a project often include a detailed plan for risk management. When you manage a project, it makes sense to anticipate and prepare for potential setbacks. For example, to roll out a new product line, a software development company must strive to complete tasks on a schedule in order to meet the new product release date. The project manager may need to adjust the project plan if one or more tasks fall behind schedule.

Key Takeaways

  • To complete a research project successfully, a writer must carefully manage each phase of the process and break major steps into smaller tasks.
  • Writers can plan a research project by setting up a schedule based on the deadline and by identifying useful project resources.
  • Writers stay focused by using organizational tools that suit their needs.
  • Anticipating and planning for potential setbacks can help writers avoid those setbacks or minimize their effect on the project schedule.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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  • Research Process

Research Team Structure

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Table of Contents

A scientific research team is a group of individuals, working to complete a research project successfully. When run well, the research team members work closely, and have clearly defined roles. Every team member should know their role, and how it plays into the project as a whole. Ultimately, the principal investigator is responsible for every aspect of the project.

In this article, we’ll review research team roles and responsibilities, and the typical structure of a scientific research team. If you are forming a research team, or are part of one, this information can help you ensure smooth operations and effective teamwork.

Team Members

A group of individuals working toward a common goal: that’s what a research team is all about. In this case, the shared goal between team members is the successful research, data analysis, publication and dissemination of meaningful findings. There are key roles that must be laid out BEFORE the project is started, and the “CEO” of the team, namely the Principal Investigator, must provide all the resources and training necessary for the team to successfully complete its mission.

Every research team is structured differently. However, there are five key roles in each scientific research team.

1. Principal Investigator (PI):

this is the person ultimately responsible for the research and overall project. Their role is to ensure that the team members have the information, resources and training they need to conduct the research. They are also the final decision maker on any issues related to the project. Some projects have more than one PI, so the designated individuals are known as Co-Principal Investigators.

PIs are also typically responsible for writing proposals and grant requests, and selecting the team members. They report to their employer, the funding organization, and other key stakeholders, including all legal as well as academic regulations. The final product of the research is the article, and the PI oversees the writing and publishing of articles to disseminate findings.

2. Project or Research Director:

This is the individual who is in charge of the day-to-day functions of the research project, including protocol for how research and data collection activities are completed. The Research Director works very closely with the Principal Investigator, and both (or all, if there are multiple PIs) report on the research.

Specifically, this individual designs all guidelines, refines and redirects any protocol as needed, acts as the manager of the team in regards to time and budget, and evaluates the progress of the project. The Research Director also makes sure that the project is in compliance with all guidelines, including federal and institutional review board regulations. They also usually assist the PI in writing the research articles related to the project, and report directly to the PI.

3. Project Coordinator or Research Associate:

This individual, or often multiple individuals, carry out the research and data collection, as directed by the Research Director and/or the Principal Investigator. But their role is to also evaluate and assess the project protocol, and suggest any changes that might be needed.

Project Coordinators or Research Associates also need to be monitoring any experiments regarding compliance with regulations and protocols, and they often help in reporting the research. They report to the Principal Investigator, Research Director, and sometimes the Statistician (see below).

4. Research Assistant:

This individual, or individuals, perform the day-to-day tasks of the project, including collecting data, maintaining equipment, ordering supplies, general clerical work, etc. Typically, the research assistant has the least amount of experience among the team members. Research Assistants usually report to the Research Associate/Project Coordinator, and sometimes the Statistician.

5. Statistician:

This is the individual who analyzes any data collected during the project. Sometimes they just analyze and report the data, and other times they are more involved in the organization and analysis of the research throughout the entire study. Their primary role is to make sure that the project produces reliable and valid data, and significant data via analysis methodology, sample size, etc. The Statistician reports both to the Principal Investigator and the Research Director.

Research teams may include people with different roles, such as clinical research specialists, interns, student researchers, lab technicians, grant administrators, and general administrative support staff. As mentioned, every role should be clearly defined by the team’s Principal Investigator. Obviously, the more complex the project, the more team members may be required. In such cases, it may be necessary to appoint several Principal Administrators and Research Directors to the research team.

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Research for Organizing

Research for Organizing

A Toolkit for Participatory Action Research from TakeRoot Justice

Download the Entire Chapter as a PDF

DESIGNING YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT

This section is designed to assist you with the planning phase of your Participatory Action Research (PAR) project. The section includes activities that will enable your group to make informed decisions about starting a research project, developing research goals and questions, choosing a research method, and creating a plan and timeline to guide your research. It also includes tools that will help your team to design and plan your overall research project.

Download Activity 2.1

Activity: 2.1 Developing Research Goals and Questions

Purpose of Activity:

The purpose of this activity is to have participants discuss the goals and purpose of the research project. After you’ve discussed what the research is trying to accomplish and why your organization is doing it, the participants will come up with research questions that will guide the research process.

By the End of Activity Participants Will:

  • Discuss the social or policy change you want to bring about through your research and campaign work
  • Discuss why research is useful or relevant to your organization or campaign
  • Determine the overarching questions you want to answer through your research

Before this Activity Participants Will Need to:

Be introduced to the basics of Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Decide that PAR is right for your organization

Tools Needed:

Copies of Tool 2.1: Guiding Questions for Developing Research Goals and Questions

Materials Needed:

Butcher paper

Research Goals

Research Question

Intended Audience:

Community Members

Time Needed:

Part I:  What and Why of PAR  (20 minutes)

Facilitator Instructions:

1. Provide a brief summary of your campaign to set the context for the discussion 2. Explain that today we will have a discussion about using participatory action research in our campaign. We are going to try to begin to develop goals and questions that can guide our research. 3.  Write “What?” at the top of a piece of butcher paper, and go through the questions below with the participants. Record responses on butcher paper, and keep the paper for later. (If you have 7 or more participants you can break out into small groups).

…is the social or policy change you want to bring about at the end of the day?

…are the overarching questions you want to answer through your research?

…information do you need to better understand and document the issues you are addressing?

…primary question do you want to answer with your research?

4.  Once you’ve answered each “What?” question sufficiently, write “Why?” on a new sheet of butcher paper. Go through each of the questions below with participants. Record responses.

…is research useful or important for your organization? Will it be used…

…internally, to inform and assess needs in the community?

…externally, to mobilize and educate community members or elected officials around an issue?

Part II:  Developing Research Goals (20 minutes)

  • Put up a piece of butcher paper that says “Research Goals: What you want to accomplish with your research?”
  • Facilitate a discussion based upon your group’s answer to the “What” and “Why” questions that leads the group to establish the goals of the research and the research questions.
  • Ask the question: based on the answers to the “What” and “Why” questions, what are our goals for this research? What do we want to accomplish through doing this research?
  • Ask people to popcorn responses and record their responses on butcher paper.
  • Explain that now that we have some research goals, we need to frame those goals as questions in order to conduct research.

Part III: Developing Research Questions (20 minutes)

  • Frame the activity: explain that part of being a researcher is to ask questions and find answers.  To design a research project you need to first figure out what big questions you want to answer.  We will use our list of goals to figure out what questions we want to ask
  • Put up a piece of butcher paper that says: “Research Questions: What big questions do you want to answer with your research?”  Also write an example of a research question on the butcher paper.  For example, if one of our goals is to document rapid development of luxury housing in our neighborhood, our question would be, “What is the current state of housing development in our neighborhood?”
  • Ask the question: based on the answers to the “What” and “Why” questions and the goals we just created, what big questions do we want to answer through our research?
  • Explain to the groups that these goals and questions will be the foundation for your research design and implementation.

Download Activity 2.2

Activity: 2.2 Choosing Your Research Method

This activity is designed to help organizers and members understand the various options for how they can conduct research and choose the research method(s) they will use.

  • Finalize research goals and questions
  • Understand relevant research methods
  • Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different research methods
  • Decide the research method appropriate for your group

Develop research goals and research questions

Copies of Tool 2.2: Guiding Questions for Choosing a Research Method

Copies of Tool 2.3: PAR Menu of Methods

Post-it notes

Quantitative Data

Qualitative Data

Focus Groups

Community Mapping

Community Visioning

Secondary Data

Media Review

Literature Review

Community Members or Organizers

Part I: Nailing Down your Research Goals and Questions  (15 minutes)

  • Frame the activity in the context of your campaign: now that we’ve decided to do participatory research we need to dig into how to do it. There are a bunch of different ways we can conduct research so we need to explore these different research methods.
  • Put up the butcher paper with “Research Goals” and “Research Questions” from Section 2, Activity 1.
  • Ask the group, is anything missing?
  • Wrap it up: Summarize what has been said and explain that these goals and questions will help to determine which methods you will use to conduct your research.

Part II:  Brainstorm as a Big Group  (25 minutes)

  • Explain that now that we have determined some of our goals and research questions, we need to dig into how to do the research.
  • Next, facilitate a discussion that answers the questions: how do we do the research, when do we do it and where? Record responses on butcher paper, and keep butcher paper for Part 3 (This can also be done in break-out groups).

…can you document or better understand the issue? Do you need “hard” numbers (quantitative data) and/or stories of personal experience (qualitative data) or both?

…are you going to give legs to your research? What action strategies could you employ to make the research and report as impactful as possible?

…are the stakeholders in the issue? Who has interest? Who is affected?

…needs to have their voice be heard?

…are you trying to influence? Who has power over the issue?

…is your target audience (community members, elected officials, media)?

…will collect your data?

…can you find the people you need to talk to get your data?

…can you find existing information that is relevant to your research?

…can you go for support and assistance (non-profits, universities, government agencies)?

Part II:  Understanding the Research Methods  (35 minutes)

  • Choose 3-4 methods that you think are the most relevant to your project (from Tool T2.1 PAR Menu of Methods).
  • Break the participants into 3-4 groups and assign one method that you’ve chosen to each group.
  • Pass out Tool T2.1 “PAR Menu of Methods” to each group.
  • Tell each group to read over the description for the method they have been assigned and give them 5-7 minutes to make up a skit for that method.  Encourage them to be creative.
  • Have each small group perform their skit.
  • After each skit, facilitate a discussion with the full group.  Ask the group: what did you see in the skit? What do you think are the pros and cons of that method for our work?  Record the pros and cons list on butcher paper.

Part III:  Decide Your Research Method  (20 Minutes)

  • Place the butcher papers from each A2.2 activity next to each other at the focal point of the room.
  • First, ask a volunteer to read your responses to the “How” “Who” and “Where” questions from the first activity to remind everyone of your initial conversations.
  • Facilitate a discussion: now that we know more about each of the possible research methods, which methods align with the groups responses to the “How”, “Who” and “Where” questions?
  • Make a decision about which method(s) make the most sense for your project. Record the methods you choose to put into your research workplan (see Tool 2.3).

Download Activity 2.3

Activity: 2.3 Developing Your Research Timeline

This activity is designed to enable your research team to sit together and plan out the remaining steps of your research project. Through the activity, participants will devise a timeline that will map out all of the necessary steps in your project, and will specify who is going to be responsible for each step of the project. By the end of the activity you will have created a research timeline that you can use to guide the rest of your project.

By the End of this Activity You Will:

  • Map out all of the steps of your research project in a timeline
  • Decide who is going to do what and when they are going to do it
  • Create a system of accountability for your research project

Have been introduced to the basics of Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Have created the research goals and questions for your project

Have decided on your research method

Tool 2.4: Research Timeline Template

Data Report Back

Policy Recommendation

Members and Organizers that will be active in research process

Part I:  Creating Your Research Plan and Timeline  (15 minutes)

1.  Before the meeting prepare the room.

  • Prepare two pieces of butcher paper in advance; Butcher Paper 1:  a list of the main steps in PAR (listed below), Butcher Paper 2: recreate the table below on large sheets of butcher paper big enough so that you can write in each box. Depending on the specifics of your project you may need to modify this table.
  • Place the two pieces of butcher paper next to each other at the front of the room with the PAR steps to the left of the table.
  • Fill out the first three steps (Organizing Goal, Research Question, and Research Plan) in the table if you have already done them. Fill out any other steps that you have already discussed or figured out (for example you might have chosen someone to design the research instruments).

2.  Introduce the activity; today we are going to create our research plan. By the end of the meeting we will have completed a timeline of the research steps and will have split up who will do what. 3.  Describe the butcher paper sheets you have created. Describe that you will be using these sheets to create your timeline. 4.  Go through each of the PAR steps that you will use for your project and fill out the what, when and who of each step with participants. 5.  After you’ve completed the table, take a moment to congratulate everyone as you have now finished the planning stages of your research project! 6.  Keep all of the Butcher Paper sheets you created and use them to type up your Research Plan (see Tool 2.4 and T2.5:  Template for Research Work Plan and Research Timeline Template).

Download Tool 2.1

Tool: 2.1 Guiding Questions for Developing Research Goals and Questions

Descarga Herramienta 2.1 En Espanol

WHAT…

…is the social or policy change you want to bring about at the end of the day?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

…are your organizing goals, and how can this research be helpful achieving these goals? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

…information do you need to better understand and document the issues you are addressing? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

…is research useful or important for your organization? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

… internally, to inform and assess needs in the community?          YES          NO

Explain:_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

… externally, to mobilize and educate community members around an  issue?

YES        NO

…to support a specific policy campaign or influence policy and public debate around an issue?

YES           NO

Download Tool 2.2

Tool: 2.2 Guiding Questions for Choosing a Research Method

Descarga Herramienta 2.2 En Espanol

…  can you document or better understand the issue?  Do you need “hard” numbers (quantitative data) or stories of personal experience (qualitative data)?

Quantitative         Qualitative           Both

________________________________________________________

…  are you going to give legs to your research? What action strategies could you employ to make the research and report as effective as possible? ________________________________________________________

… are the stakeholders in the issue? Who has interest, who is affected? ________________________________________________________

…needs their voice to be heard? ________________________________________________________

…are you trying to influence? Who has power over the issue? ________________________________________________________

…is your target audience (community members, elected officials, media)? ________________________________________________________

…will collect your data? ________________________________________________________

… can you go to for information and other existing data? ________________________________________________________

…can you go for support and assistance (non-profits, universities, government agencies)? ________________________________________________________

… is the right time to do research? ________________________________________________________

…In your campaign? ________________________________________________________

…In the political context? ________________________________________________________

…In your organization? …In the political context? ________________________________________________________

Download Tool 2.3

Tool: 2.3 Participatory Action Research (PAR) Menu of Methods

Descarga Herramienta 2.3 En Espanol

  • Surveys-  Ask specific questions and tend to include short answer, multiple-choice, and scaled-answer questions. Surveys can be done online, through the mail, and can be written and filled out in person.  The most effective way to conduct surveys in support of organizing is in an in person “interview style” so that the surveyor can make personal connections with the respondent. Surveys are helpful for getting information or data from a wider group of people and are better for getting quantitative information like numbers, than they are for getting qualitative information, like people’s stories. Surveys can be helpful when making policy demands because elected officials, policymakers and the media tend to respond to hard numbers.
  • Interviews-  Are guided conversations about a specific topic, are often done one-on-one, and tend to use open-ended questions in order to get in-depth explanations.  Interviews are useful when you want to get more specific, detailed information than you would get from a survey and you want to get deeper into people’s experiences and personal stories. Interviews are appropriate when dealing with sensitive or personal information that people may not be comfortable writing on a survey or sharing in a group setting (such as a focus group). Interviews can also assist the organizing outreach process because they facilitate one-to-one interaction, but they can be more time intensive then surveys.
  • Focus Groups-  Are small group sessions (7-12 people) that are led by a facilitator in order to obtain opinions based on the research question.  Like interviews, focus groups are good for getting qualitative data, and are an effective way to get people’s personal stories, testimonies, and experiences from a group setting. They can also be useful for delving deeper into a specific issue or research question not fully addressed by another method.  Focus groups can be useful in allowing participants to bounce ideas and stories off of each other.  Due to the group setting, they can also be more challenging than interviews for discussing sensitive topics.
  • Community Mapping/Canvassing-  Is a process of documenting and visually presenting trends or patterns in a given community.  Community maps and canvassing can be used to document many physical, spatial dynamics of a neighborhood from new construction sites, to new luxury condos, to green spaces, to new businesses, to vacant lots, etc. This is an effective tool for tracking physical changes in a neighborhood, and specifically as a way to document the impact of gentrification on a neighborhood.
  • Community Visioning-  Is a process where group of community members come together to develop an alternative vision or proposal for the future of their community.  Visioning can be used to develop public policy demands and can be particularly useful when communities are working to impact the physical development of their community.  This can also be useful for groups working to influence a particular issue or policy.
  • Mystery Shopping-  Is a process where community members posing as customers call or visit businesses and document their experience and observations.  Usually mystery shoppers have a specific set of criteria they are looking for when they visit or call a business.  This is a good way to document employment practices, compliance with labor laws, and consumer fraud.
  • Secondary data-  Is data that comes from someone else’s research.  This is distinct from “primary data” which is original data that you collect through your own research in the field.  Secondary data is helpful for getting background information that will complement the ground-level information that comes from people’s experiences (primary data). It can also be helpful to do a bit of secondary data collection before you begin your primary data collection in order to focus your research questions and help you to develop your research instruments (such as surveys and interview guides). Secondary data can come from a variety of public and private sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau, city and state agencies, research organizations and academic institutions.
  • Media Review-  Is a systematic review of a certain number of news articles or clips from a variety of sources about a specific topic to uncover the most common words or themes that emerge.  This can be used as background research to help inform your research design and can also be used on its own to give you data about how a specific issue is being presented or framed in the media.
  • Literature Review-  Is a review of existing articles, academic studies or reports in order to find out what information already exists about the topic you are exploring.  This can be part of your secondary research; can help inform your research questions and can help you identify gaps in research and information on a given issue.

Download Tool 2.4 as a Word Doc

Tool: 2.4 Research Work Plan Template

Why is This Tool Useful?

Descarga Herramienta 2.4 En Espanol

This tool will help to document your research plan and methodology.  It is also useful in developing a workplan, timeline and accountability mechanism for your project to make sure that each member of your research team is doing the work they have committed to doing and are keeping up with deadlines.   This can also be helpful in putting together proposals for funding or other support because you will have all the information about your project in one place. Below is a template for a research plan.  Sections can be shifted and deleted as needed.

Name of Organization(s):

Name of Research Project:

This section should include some background information about the social issue that your research will address and/ or the campaign that your research will support.

Overview of project

This section should provide a brief overview of the research project including what issue you are addressing and why, what information you plan to collect, whom you are collecting the information from and how you are collecting information (See Tools 2.1 and 2.2).

Goals of project

This section should include a bulleted list of what you hope to achieve through doing this research project.  Some examples include:

  • To gather current and detailed data from our community.
  • To develop skills and leadership of members.
  • To build the base of members in our organization.
  • To educate elected officials about our organization’s campaign.

Research Questions

This should include a bulleted list of the overarching questions you hope to answer through your research.  Research questions are different from survey or interview questions because they are broad and can help to guide the more specific questions you will ask in your surveys, interviews, focus groups, canvassing Tool, etc. Some examples include:

  • What is the impact of poor housing conditions on residents of Chinatown?
  • What types of benefits are workers getting and what are they not getting from their employers?
  • How do various policies and procedures at methadone programs affect participant’s access to methadone?
  • What is the current state of luxury housing development in low-income communities of color in NYC?

Methodology/Research Components

This section should include all the methods you will use to answer your research questions along with a short description for each method. Below are some examples, but you should feel free to chose other methods (see Tool 2.3)

  • Short survey:   This short survey will be focused on collecting updated and detailed data on x, y and z.  The goal will be to collect 500 surveys.  The surveys will be translated into Spanish and French languages and administered by members of our organization.
  • In Depth Interviews:  Members and organizers will conduct in depth interviews with 5-10 workers in order to collect qualitative data about x and y and to show z.
  • Secondary Research:  Members will conduct an analysis of current literature and data to support the findings from field research.
  • Media Review:  Members will review 100 articles found in local newspapers in the last three years that include the word “public housing” in the headline.  Researchers will identify the most prevalent words and themes in these articles.

Project Output

This section should include a few sentences about what you will create at the end of this project.  This could be a report, a 1 or 2 page summary of your findings, a map, a video, etc.

How the PAR Project Will Support Community Organizing

This section should explain how your research will support and be integrated into your organizing campaign.  Will your research help with leadership development? Help to build your base? Help to garner media attention about a policy issue you are fighting for?

This table should include all of the different tasks that you will need to complete for the research project, along with who will be responsible for completing the task and by what date.  The tasks will differ depending on which methods you chose but Tool 2.5 will provide a template as a place to start.

Download Tool 2.5 as a Word Doc

Tool: 2.5 Research Timeline Template

Download Tool 2.5 as a PDF

Download Tool 2.6 as a PDF

Tool: 2.6 Advisory Board Invitation Template

Download Tool 2.6 as a Word Doc

Tool 2.6:  Sample Advisory Board Invitation Template

Why is this tool useful?

Developing a Research Advisory Board can be a great way to bring together a team of resource allies to support and add capacity to your Participatory Action Research. Academics, lawyers or policy analysts that specialize in the issue you are researching are all good examples of potential advisors. We recommend bringing advisors together as a group early in the process and being clear about the role they will play and what they can expect from the process. Below is a sample letter you can send to invite advisors to an initial meeting. We also have a sample agenda for a Research Advisory Board meet (see Tool 2.7).

[INSERT YOUR ORGANIZATION’S LOGO OR PUT ON ORGANIZATIONAL LETTERHEAD]

Dear ________________,

I hope you are well! I am writing to you to ask you to be a part of an exciting new research project of the  [YOUR ORGANIZATION’S NAME]  by serving on our advisory board.

As you may know…  [INSERT BRIEF SUMMARY ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION’S OVERARCHING GOALS AND AIMS]

As part of this work,   we are planning to conduct a participatory action research project focusing on [RESEARCH TOPIC].

Because of your familiarity with [ORGANIZATION NAME] and your expertise with these issues or strategies, I am reaching out to you in the hopes that you will serve on a Research Advisory Team to provide feedback on our research.  As an advisor, I am requesting that you participate in one or more of the following:

  • Read a draft of our report and provide feedback;
  • Participate in one or more conference calls about the report;
  • Provide feedback on policy recommendations;
  • Provide advice on how to best use the report to advance  [ORGANIZATION’S NAME] ’s advocacy and organizing goals.

Please let me know by  [INSERT DATE]  if you are willing to participate on this Research Advisory Team.  We will be scheduling for a meeting for  [INSERT DATE].  Please don’t hesitate to call  (XXX) XXX- XXXX  or email [ INSERT EMAIL HERE ] if you would like additional information or have further questions.  We hope you will join us in this important work!

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT POSITION]

Download Tool 2.7 as a PDF

Tool: 2.7 Sample Advisory Board Meeting Agenda Template

Download Tool 2.7 as a Word Doc

Developing a Research Advisory Board can be a great way to bring together a team of resource allies to support and add capacity to your Participatory Action Research. Academics, lawyers or policy analysts that specialize in the issue you are researching are all good examples of potential advisors. Once the Research Advisory Board (see Tool 2.6) is assembled, it is a good idea to bring the Board together as early in the research process as possible. The research plan should be more or less complete by this point (see Tool 2.4), and advisors can give valuable feedback on research goals and questions, methodology, project output and the timeline. The advisors should also walk away with a concrete understanding of their role in the work and what you will be asking of them in participating in the research process. It is also a good idea to make sure the research timeline is mostly complete (see Tool 2.5) because this will make planning next steps with the board easier. Below is a sample meeting agenda for the Research Advisory Board, which can be used to ensure that the meeting is productive and provides crucial feedback on the project.

Research Advisory Board Meeting

Download The Case Study

Case Study: 2.1 Center for Frontline Retail and CDP Report: Pathways to Success: The Need for Accessible, Appropriate Trainings for Retail Workers, 2017

Download the Report

organization when doing a research project helps you to

Background on the Organization and Issue

The Center for Frontline Retail (CFR) is a worker-led organization committed to improving the lives of retail workers through community organizing, industry analysis, and leadership development. CFR works to simultaneously elevate workers’ voices and raise standards in the retail sector. CFR’s prior research has shown that retail workers face discrimination and harassment in the workplace, along with unfair scheduling practices.

Through discussions with their members, CFR identified a lack of training opportunities for workers, impacting their ability to advance in the sector.  . CFR also noticed that women and people of color are disproportionately affected by the lack of training from employers and as a result lack opportunities for career advancement.

In order to document the lack of training and advancement opportunities for retail workers, and the disproportionate effect of this on women and people of color, CFR partnered with the Community Development Project on a participatory action research project in order to voice the concerns of retail workers and highlight CFR’s training model as a pathway for advancement. This project ultimately resulted in a report that describes workers’ desire for, and barriers to, training and advancement opportunities in the retail industry, outlines policies that would set aside money to train retail workers, and puts the CFR training model forward to train and educate entry level workers, as well as higher level training to grow within the retail industry.

Below is a description of the Center for Frontline Retail Research Project, based on the Participatory Action Research guiding framework  (see Tools  2.1  and  2.2 ).

Were the Organizing Goals connected to this research?

  • To generate data on the training needs of retail workers in NYC.
  • To document and generate data on the extent to which retail workers are offered training and education programs by their employers, and distinguish whether workers of color and women are able to access such programs.
  • To document the experiences of people of color and women working in the retail industry in accessing appropriate trainings and education programs.
  • To explore and document the existing training and education programs that are available to retail workers and their associated costs.

Overall questions did CFR want to answer through their research?

  • What is the current training and education landscape for retail workers in NYC?
  • What are the training and education needs of retail workers (with focus on women and people of color)?
  • What are the experiences of women and people of color working in retail in accessing training and other career advancement opportunities?

Is this research useful or important for CFR?

  • INTERNALLY: to base build and educate retail workers; to develop member leaders and their outreach skills.
  • EXTERNALLY: to inform a curriculum developed for retail workers that would provide crucial training for career advancement; put together the landscape of barriers that retail workers face in accessing education and training; put forward recommendations for retailers to adopt high road retail strategies.

Are the Stakeholders in this Issue?

  • Retail workers in New York City

Was CFR trying to influence?

  • New York City Council Members, Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development, retail employers and brands, developers of commercial retail spaces

Did CFR gather information (what methods did they use)?

  • SHORT SURVEY :   CFR members administered a survey to 300 retail workers in order to understand the training needs and existing training opportunities of retail workers working in general merchandise stores in New York City, specifically discount, fast fashion and high end stores. Retail workers were targeted during classes at the Center for Frontline Retail and when retail workers were on breaks throughout the work day.
  • FOCUS GROUPS:  In order to build and expand on the quantitative data gathered from surveys, CFR also conducted three focus groups with their members in order to collect qualitative data about the experiences and stories of retail workers accessing trainings in the workplace, and to show the barriers and discrimination faced by women and people of color.
  • SECONDARY RESEARCH : CDP conducted an analysis of current literature and data to support findings from research, and to document the current landscape of trainings, curriculum and education programs in retail.

Did Research support CFR’s organizing efforts?

  • The survey project provided opportunities to base build and educate community members. The focus groups provided member leaders with the opportunity to learn facilitation skills and a deepened understanding of the landscape of barriers facing workers.
  • The data collected through the research was written into a report and presented to key stakeholders in the retail sector, such as retail employers, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development, and developers of commercial work spaces who could partner with CFR to provide training to potential retail workers.

Read the report  here . Read coverage of the report release in  Crains NY  and the  Associated Press .

  • Designing Your Research project
  • Developing Research Goals and Questions
  • Choosing Your Research Method
  • Developing Your Research Timeline
  • Guiding Questions for Developing Research Goals and Questions
  • Guiding Questions for Choosing a Research Method
  • Participatory Action Research (PAR) Menu of Methods
  • Research Work Plan Template
  • Research Timeline Template
  • Advisory Board Invitation Template
  • Sample Advisory Board Meeting Agenda Template
  • Center for Frontline Retail and CDP Report: Pathways to Success: The Need for Accessible, Appropriate Trainings for Retail Workers, 2017

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
  • Group Presentations
  • Dealing with Nervousness
  • Using Visual Aids
  • Grading Someone Else's Paper
  • Types of Structured Group Activities
  • Group Project Survival Skills
  • Leading a Class Discussion
  • Multiple Book Review Essay
  • Reviewing Collected Works
  • Writing a Case Analysis Paper
  • Writing a Case Study
  • About Informed Consent
  • Writing Field Notes
  • Writing a Policy Memo
  • Writing a Reflective Paper
  • Writing a Research Proposal
  • Generative AI and Writing
  • Acknowledgments

A group project is a cooperative learning assignment that requires students to work with peer group members to plan, discuss, and complete a specific project, often over the course of an entire semester. The project can be a research paper, an in-class oral presentation, an out-of-class study project, or research contributed as part of a larger class project involving multiple student groups . The purpose is to prepare students to work collaboratively in order to develop the intellectual and social skills needed to examine research problems from a variety of perspectives, to communicate effectively with their peers, and to evaluate and resolve issues on their own with support from other group members.

Burke, Alison. “Group Work: How to Use Groups Effectively.” The Journal of Effective Teaching 11 (2011): 87-95; Colbeck, Carol L., Susan E. Campbell, and Stefani A. Bjorklund. “Grouping in the Dark: What College Students Learn from Group Projects.” The Journal of Higher Education 71 (January - February, 2000): 60-83; Using Group Projects Effectively. Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University; Williams, Katherine. Group Work Benefits and Examples. Study.com.

Benefits of Group Work

As stressful as it can be, group work can actually be beneficial in the long run because it closely parallels the dynamics of serving on a committee, participating in a task force, or working on a collaborative project found in most professional workplace settings. Whatever form the group assignment takes in your course, the opportunity to work with others, rather than on your own, can provide distinct benefits. These include:

  • Increased productivity and performance -- groups that work well together can achieve much more than individuals working on their own. A broader range of skills can be applied to practical activities and the process of sharing and discussing ideas can play a pivotal role in deepening your understanding of the research problem. This process also enhances opportunities for applying strategies of critical inquiry and creative or radical problem-solving to an issue.
  • Skills development -- being part of a team will help you develop your interpersonal skills. This can include expressing your ideas clearly, listening carefully to others, participating effectively in group deliberations, and clearly articulating to group members t he results of your research . Group work can also help develop collaborative skills, such as, team-based leadership and effectively motivating others. These skills will be useful throughout your academic career and all are highly sought after by employers.
  • Knowing more about yourself -- working with others will help identify your own strengths and weaknesses in a collaborative context. For example, you may be a better leader than listener, or, you might be good at coming up with the 'big idea' but not so good at developing a specific plan of action. Enhanced self-awareness about the challenges you may have in working with others will enhance overall learning experiences. Here again, this sense about yourself will be invaluable when you enter the workforce.

Colbeck, Carol L., Susan E. Campbell, and Stefani A. Bjorklund. “Grouping in the Dark: What College Students Learn from Group Projects.” The Journal of Higher Education 71 (January - February, 2000): 60-83; Collaborative Learning/Learning with Peers. Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Golde, Chris M. Tips for Successful Writing Groups. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Presented November, 1994; Updated November, 1996 at Association for the Study of Higher Education; Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Collaborative Pedagogy." In Composition Pedagogies: A Bibliographic Guide . Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 54-71; Thom, Michael. "Are Group Assignments Effective Pedagogy or a Waste of Time? A Review of the Literature and Implications for Practice." Teaching Public Administration 38 (2020): 257-269;

Stages of Group Work

I.  Getting Started

To ensure that your group gets off to a good start, it may be beneficial to:

  • Take time for all members to introduce themselves, including name, background, and stating specific strengths in contributing to the overall goals of the assignment.
  • Nominate or vote to have someone act as the group leader or facilitator or scheduler. If the burden might be too great, consider deciding to rotate this responsibility among all group members.
  • Exchange current contact information, such as, email addresses, social media information, and cell phone numbers.
  • Consider creating an online workspace account to facilitate discussions, editing documents, sharing files, exchanging ideas, and to manage a group calendar. There are many free online platforms available for this type of work such as Google docs.

II.  Discussing Goals and Tasks

After you and the other members of the group agree about how to approach the assignment, take time to make sure everyone understands what it is they will need to achieve. Consider the following:

  • What are the goals of the assignment? Develop a shared understanding of the assignment's expected learning outcomes to ensure that everyone knows what their role is supposed to be within the group.
  • Note when the assignment is due [or when each part is due] so that everyone is on the same schedule and any potential conflicts with assignment due dates in other classes can be addressed ahead of time by each members of the group.
  • Discuss how you are going to specifically meet the requirements of the assignment. For example, if the assignment is to write a sample research grant, what topic are you going to research and what organizations would you solicit funding from?
  • If your professor allows considerable flexibility in pursuing the goals of the assignment, it often helps to brainstorm a number of ideas and then assess the merits of each one separately. As a group, reflect upon the following questions: How much do you know about this topic already? Is the topic interesting to everyone? If it is not interesting to some, they may not be motivated to work as hard as they might on a topic they found interesting. Can you do a good job on this topic in the available time? With the available people? With the available resources? How easy or hard would it be to obtain good information on the topic? [ NOTE:   Consult with a librarian before assuming that information may be too difficult to find!].

III.  Planning and Preparation

This is the stage when your group should plan exactly what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and determine who should do what. Pay attention to the following:

  • Work together to break the project up into separate tasks and decide on the tasks or sub-tasks each member is responsible for. Make sure that work is equally distributed among each member of the group.
  • Agree on the due-dates for completing each task, keeping in mind that members will need time to review any draft documents and the group must have time at the end to pull everything together.
  • Develop mechanisms for keeping in touch, meeting periodically, and the preferred methods for sharing information. Discuss and identify any potential stumbling blocks that may arise that could hinder your work [e.g., mid-terms].

NOTE:   Try to achieve steps 1, 2, and 3 in a group meeting that is scheduled as soon as possible after you have received the assignment and your group has been formed. The sooner these preliminary tasks are agreed upon, the sooner each group member can focus on their particular responsibilities.

IV.  Implementation

While each member carries out their individual tasks, it is important to preserve your group's focus and sense of purpose. Effective communication is vital, particularly when your group activity extends over an extended period of time. Here are some tips to promote good communication:

  • Keep in touch with each other frequently, reporting progress regularly. When the group meets for the first time, think about about setting up a regular day and time for people to report on their progress [either in-person or online].
  • If someone is having trouble completing his or her area of responsibility, work with that person to figure out how to solve the problem. Be supportive and helpful, but don't offer to do other people's work.
  • At the same time, make it clear that the group is depending on everyone to do their part; all group members should agree that it is detrimental to everyone in the group for one person to show up at the last minute without his or her work done.

V.  Finishing Up

Be sure to leave enough time to put all the pieces together before the group project is due and to make sure nothing has been forgotten [e.g., someone forgot to correct a chart or a page is missing]. Synthesizing each group member's work usually requires some negotiation and, collectively, overcoming any existing obstacles towards completion. Technically, this can be done online, but it is better to meet in person to ensure that everyone is actively involved in the process.

If your group has to give a presentation about the results of their research, go through the same process--decide who is going to do what and give everyone enough time to prepare and practice ahead of time [preferably together]. At this point before the assignment is due, it is vital to ensure that you pay particular attention to detail, tie up any loose ends, and review the research project together as a team rather than just looking over individual contributions.

VI.  Writing Up Your Project

Writing the group report can be challenging; it is critical that you leave enough time for this final stage. If your group decided to divide responsibility for drafting sections, you will need to nominate a member of the group [if not done so already] to bring everything together so that the narrative flows well and isn't disjointed. Make it their assignment rather than assigning that person to also write a section of the report. It is best to choose whomever in your group is the best writer because careful copy editing at this stage is essential to ensure that the final document is well organized and logically structured.

Focus on the following:

  • Have all the writers in your group use the same writing style [e.g., verb tense, diction or word choice, tone, voice, etc.]?
  • Are there smooth transitions between individual sections?
  • Are the citations to sources, abbreviations, and non-textual elements [charts, graphs, tables, etc.] consistent?

Barkley, Elizabeth F., Claire Howell Major, and K. Patricia Cross. Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty . 2nd edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2014; Boud, David, Ruth Cohen, and Jane Sampson, editors. Peer Learning in Higher Education: Learning from and with Each Other . Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2001; Collaborative Learning/Learning with Peers. Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Espey, Molly. "Enhancing Critical Thinking using Team-Based Learning." Higher Education Research and Development 37 (2018): 15-29; Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Collaborative Pedagogy." In Composition Pedagogies: A Bibliographic Guide . Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 54-71; INDOT Group Work and Report Planning Handout. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Working in Groups. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Working in Groups. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Group Writing. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Golde, Chris M. Tips for Successful Writing Groups. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Presented November, 1994; Updated November, 1996 at Association for the Study of Higher Education.

Meeting Places

Where Your Group Meets Matters!

Choosing where to you meet can have as much of an impact on your group's overall success as how well you communicate and work together. When your group is first formed, be sure to set aside some time to discuss and come to an agreement about where to meet in the future. Obviously, convenience has a lot to do with your possible choices. However, discussions of where to meet should also focus on identifying a space that's comfortable, easily accessible to everyone, and does not have any distractions, such as, the smell of food from nearby, heavy foot traffic, or constant noise,

Places that meet all of these conditions are the collaborative workrooms in the East Asian Library of Doheny or the group study spaces in the Lower Computer Commons of Leavey Library or on the second floor of Leavey Library. These rooms can seat anywhere from 4 to 10 people and all have dry erase boards and power and network connectivity. Most rooms also have large monitors with laptop connections that your group can use to display a presentation, document, spreadsheet, or other information that is the focus of your collaborative work. Note that these rooms are very popular, especially towards the end of the semester, so schedule early and be courteous in promptly cancelling your reservation so others may use the room. Finally, if everyone agrees that meeting in person is not crucial, a meeting to discuss the group's activities can be conducted over Zoom or other video conferencing platform.

Bilandzic, Mark and Marcus Foth. "Libraries as Coworking Spaces: Understanding User Motivations and Perceived Barriers to Social Learning," Library Hi Tech 31 (2013): 254-273.

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SW 6160 - Graduate Social Work Research I : Organizing Sources

  • Finding Sources
  • Evaluating Sources
  • Organizing Sources
  • Citing Sources

On This Page

Organizing Sources for a Literature Review    |   Literature Review Tips    |  Identifying Themes and Gaps in Literature (Video)

Organizing Sources for a Literature Review

"Organization is essential as you work from start to finish of your [research] project. Good organization will allow you to see where you have been and help you to see how to proceed.

  • Staying organized throughout your research will help you to avoid repeating ineffective searches.
  • When it comes to writing your literature review, staying organized will provide you a concise overview of the research you have located, and help you group thoughts and ideas.
  • This explanation does not need to be lengthy but you will need to share with your readers the databases and keywords that you used to find your research articles. This information can help future researchers pick up where your research left off."

- Walden University Library,  Library Guide to Capstone Literature Reviews: Get & Stay Organized

* Make sure to review your assignment requirements

Use the following organizational tools to help you throughout the literature search process. When you read articles, it's helpful to think about them in the context of your research question, theory, and hypothesis. These documents allow you to compile details about your sources, such as citation information, purpose, methodologies, implications, and critiques. The documents can also help with identifying similarities and themes between articles and authors.

  • Literature Review Matrix (Excel)
  • Literature Review Matrix (Word)
  • Search Log (Excel)
  • Search Log (Word)
  • Summarizing Articles (Word)

Literature Review Tips

  • Tips for Writing a Social Work Literature Review - Purdue OWL
  • Writing a Literature Review - Purdue OWL
  • Writing a Literature Review - Boston College Libraries
  • The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It - University of Toronto
  • Literature Reviews - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center
  • Undertaking a Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Approach - P. Cronin, F. Ryan, & M. Coughlan From the abstract: "The purpose of this article is to present a step-by-step guide to facilitate understanding by presenting the critical elements of the literature review process. While reference is made to different types of literature reviews, the focus is on the traditional or narrative review that is undertaken, usually either as an academic assignment or part of the research process."

Identifying Themes and Gaps in Literature - Scribbr

"Finding connections between sources is key to organizing the arguments and structure of a good literature review. In this video, you'll learn how to identify themes, debates, and gaps between sources, using examples from real papers" - YouTube video description

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  • Last Updated: Feb 5, 2024 1:55 PM
  • URL: https://guides.libraries.wright.edu/sw6160

Project Management for Research

The tools you need to make your research project a success.

This toolkit includes a variety of tools for managing your research projects including recommendations for general project management software and tools to help you and your team manage activities from grant writing to implementation and project closeout.

Explore the toolkit below:

Grant Writing + Project Development

A Gantt Chart is a popular project management tool; it is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project’s schedule. The chart allows for organizing and viewing project activities and tasks against pre-established timeframes.

Gantt Chart Template Gantt Chart Instructions Gantt Chart Example

Graphic display of the flow or sequence of events that a product or service follows; it shows all activities, decision points, rework loops and handoffs.

Process maps allow the team to visualize the process and come to agreement on the steps of a process as well as examine which activities are duplicated. Process maps are used to:

  • Capture current and new process information
  • Identify the flow of a process
  • Identify responsibility of different business functions
  • Clearly show hand-off between functions
  • Identify value added and non-value added activities
  • Train team members in new process

Process Map Template Process Mapping Guide Process Map Example 1 Process Map Example 2

The Data Management Plan (DMP) defines the responsibilities related to the entry, ownership, sharing, validation, editing and storage of primary research data.

A data management plan must not only reflect the requirements of the protocol/project but also comply with applicable institutional, state and federal guidelines and regulations. The DMP Tool details your agencies expectations, has suggested language for REDCap and exports a properly formatted plan.

DMP Tool NIH Data Management & Sharing (DMS) Policy

The Project Charter's purpose is to define at a high level what the Project Team will deliver, what resources are needed and why it is justified.

The Project Charter also represents a commitment to dedicate the necessary time and resources to the project. It can be especially useful when organizing a multi-disciplinary, internally funded team. The document should be brief (up to three pages maximum).   

Project Charter Template Project Charter Instructions Project Charter Example

Milestones are an effective way to track major progress in your research project.

A Gantt Chart is an effective tool for setting and tracking milestones and deliverables. It is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project’s schedule.  

The proposal budget should be derived directly from the project description.

The proposal budget should follow the format specified by the sponsor. The Office of Sponsored Programs Budget Preparation webpages provide descriptions of the standard budget categories, lists of typical components of those categories, Ohio State rates where appropriate and other details to help ensure your budget is complete. Budget Preparation Resources from Office of Research The 398 grant form from the NIH is a template that includes standard categories required for an NIH grant (and many others) that you can use to develop a preliminary budget.

PHS 398 Forms PHS 398 Budget form for Initial Project Period Template PHS 398 Budget Form for Entire Proposal Project Template

The Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan first assists the research team in anticipating risk that may occur during the research project before it happens.

The plan then specifies when to act to mitigate risk by defining thresholds and establishing action plans to follow. As a fundamental ethical requirement research risks are to be minimized to the greatest extent possible for all research endeavors. This includes not only prompt identification measures but also response, reporting and resolution. Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan Template Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan Example

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) organizes the research project work into manageable components.

It is represented in a hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the research project team. It visually defines the scope into manageable chunks that the team can understand.  WBS Instructions and Template WBS Structure Example

Implementation

A Gantt Chart is a popular project management tool; it is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project’s schedule.

The chart allows for organizing and viewing project activities and tasks against pre-established timeframes. A Gantt Chart can also be used for tracking milestones and major progresses within your research project.

The purpose is to define at a high level what the Project Team will deliver, what resources are needed and why it is justified.   

It is represented in a hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the research project team. It visually defines the scope into manageable chunks that the team can understand.  WBS Instructions + Template WBS Structure Example

A communications plan facilitates effective and efficient dissemination of information to the research team members and major stakeholders in the research project.

It describes how the communications will occur; the content, security, and privacy of those communications; along with the method of dissemination and frequency.

Communications Plan Template Communications Plan Example

The Data Management Plan (DMP) defines the responsibilities related to the entry, ownership, sharing, validation, editing, and storage of primary research data.

A data management plan must not only reflect the requirements of the protocol/project but also comply with applicable institutional, state, and federal guidelines and regulations. The DMP Tool details your agencies expectations, has suggested language for REDCap, and exports a properly formatted plan.

DMP Tool DMP Tool Instructions Ohio State Research Guide: Data

The chart allows for organizing and viewing project activities and tasks against pre-established timeframes. Gantt Chart Template Gantt Chart Instructions Gantt Chart Example

This tool helps you capture details of issues that arise so that the project team can quickly see the status and who is responsible for resolving it.

Further, the Issue Management Tool guides you through a management process that gives you a robust way to evaluate issues, assess their impact, and decide on a plan for resolution.

Issue Management Tool Template Issue Management Tool Instructions Issue Management Example

A Pareto Chart is a graphical tool that helps break down a problem into its parts so that managers can identify the most frequent, and thus most important, problems.

It depicts in descending order (from left to right) the frequency of events being studied. It is based on the Pareto Principle or “80/20 Rule”, which says that roughly 80% of problems are caused by 20% of contributors. With the Pareto Principle Project Managers solve problems by identifying and focusing on the “vital few” problems. Managers should avoid focusing on “people” problems. Problems are usually the result of processes, not people.

Pareto Chart Template Pareto Chart Instructions Pareto Chart Example

Closeout, Transfer + Application

Completing a project means more than finishing the research. 

There remain financial, personnel, reporting, and other responsibilities. These tasks typically need to be completed within a timeline that begins 60 to 90 days before the project end date and 90 days after. Specifics will vary depending on the project and the funding source. The Office of Sponsored Programs “Project Closeout” webpage provides a description closeout issues, a list of PI Responsibilities and other details to help ensure your project is in fact complete.  Project Closeout Checklist Project Closeout Resources from Office of Research

A communications plan facilitates effective and efficient dissemination of information to the research team members and major stakeholders in the research project. 

It describes how the communications will occur; the content, security and privacy of those communications; along with the method of dissemination and frequency.

Project Management Software

An open-source project management software similar to Microsoft Project.

OpenProject  has tools to create dashboards, Gantt Charts, budgets, and status reports. Activities can be assigned to team members and progress monitored. OpenProject also has a tool for Agile Project Management. While the software is free, OpenProject must be installed and maintained on a local server and there will probably be costs associated with this. Talk to your departmental or college IT staff.

A secure, web-based project management system.

Basecamp  offers an intuitive suite of tools at a minimal cost: ~$20/month or free for teachers. Basecamp facilitates collaboration between research team members with features such as to-do lists, messaging, file sharing, assignment of tasks, milestones, due dates and time tracking.  

A project management tool that organizes tasks, activities, responsibilities and people on projects.

Trello can help manage research projects by keeping everyone on time and on task. It uses a distinctive interface based on cards and lists and may be especially useful for smaller projects.

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Conducting research within an organization.

People in the Office

© Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC . A Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing, and Evaluation

Sections of This Topic Include

Description, announce data collection to members of the organization, prepare participants before data collection, if you encounter questionable or illegal practices.

Also, consider

  • Related Library Topics
  • There Is No Hope Of Doing Perfect Research
  • Creating and Implementing Your Data Collection Plan

The following guidelines assume that you have already carefully developed a research plan and are getting ready to collect information within an organization. Ideally, you developed the research plan in a highly collaborative manner with a Project Team that includes some members of the organization. The organization might be a team, department, or overall organization. You might be doing research as part of an overall organizational evaluation or as a consultant doing the Discovery Phase of consulting.

To ensure a highly participative collection, it is critical that it maintains the ongoing commitment and ownership of its participants. Probably the most critical point in which to start cultivating that kind of buy-in is when first announcing the data collection. The announcement must be done carefully to help participants quickly realize and accept the need for the collection– so that they do not react that it is, for example, a deeply intrusive evaluation of their personal performance. Here are some suggestions to consider.

1. The Chief Executive Office and a Board member should announce the data collection to the employees. They should mention:

  • Its purpose and benefits
  • How the employees are expected to participate in it
  • When they will get the results of it
  • How they can share their ongoing feedback about how its results will be implemented
  • The members of the Project Team, especially the members of the organization
  • A primary contact person, if they have any further questions

Special care should be given to ensure sufficient time for reactions, questions, and suggestions.

2. Accompany the announcement with an official memo. The memo should soon follow the announcement and be signed by upper management. It should reiterate the information shared during the announcement.

Carefully prepare those who will be providing data — you should not start simply by asking them for input. Consider the following guidelines.

1. Management should introduce the researcher(s) to the organization. One of the most powerful ways to do this introduction is in a group, for example, in an employee meeting. The introduction should include the researcher’s description of how the information will be collected, along with any terms of confidentiality. Include time for their questions and suggestions.

2. Tell participants what is expected of them during the collection. Explain how information will be collected, and when and how they can participate. Mention any pre-work that would be useful for them to undertake and any topics or activities that they should think about before participating in the collection.

3. Contact each participant before conducting any interviews. Interviews can be a rather personal way to get useful information. It helps a great deal if the interviewer calls each participant before the actual interview in order to introduce themselves, verify the timing of the upcoming interview, and understand if the participant has any questions.

4. Review useful organizational documentation before contacting anyone. The review of documentation is a major form of data collection. The researcher can learn a great deal about the organization from the documents. That understanding is an advantage because participants soon realize that the researcher already knows a great deal about the organization. See How to Review Documentation .

Occasionally, a researcher uncovers organizational activities that seem immoral, for example, a violation of your professional standards and those in society, significant lies in the workplace or intentionally withholding very useful information from others. You might even encounter activities that are illegal, such as misappropriation of funds, fraud, theft, or violation of employment laws. This video shares guidelines for how to deal with those kinds of situations.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Planning Business Research

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to Planning Business Research. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also, see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “Next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

  • Library’s Business Planning Blog
  • Library’s Building a Business Blog
  • Library’s Strategic Planning Blog

For the Category of Business Research:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

  • Recommended Books

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IEEE Potentials Magazine

The magazine for high-tech innovators

Organizing your research and developing your skills

May 1, 2020 by Kelly A. Shaw

organization when doing a research project helps you to

After this initial flush of activity, it is important to step back and recognize that research is more like a marathon than a sprint (although there can be sprint-like periods). The process of doing research is evolutionary, where one new piece of information helps lead to another over time. Progress on your research will unfold gradually as long as you persist in working on it. Similarly, your research skills and knowledge will develop over time as you are gradually exposed to more research results and research approaches and as you create and try your ideas.

This article is geared toward helping you condition yourself to do research over the long haul—more than just a few months. It addresses how to be organized in your research, how to become a more efficient researcher, and how to develop your research skills. (If you are just getting started on research, consider reading “Getting Started on Undergraduate Research” in the June 2013 issue of IEEE Potentials for suggestions on how to begin.)

Organizing your research

As you delve into research, you will discover that the volume of data and existing related work is too much to keep track of without some organization. Additionally, the complexity and usefulness of your experimental infrastructure may demand more than one individual being involved in its maintenance and modification. Acquiring some simple habits can help you manage the large amount of research materials you acquire and help you share resources.

Preventing wheel reinvention

Research progress proceeds over long periods of time and may include the development of experimental infrastructure as well as the creation and collection of results. A single individual does not work constantly on all of the different components of his/her research, making it likely he/she will forget the particulars of what certain components do, how results were acquired, or even where items are located. As individuals share experimental infrastructure concurrently and over time, it becomes difficult for all of these users to keep track of all of this information. Consequently, an important aspect of doing research is recognizing that other researchers will use this infrastructure. Doing your best to make that utilization easy will prevent individuals from wasting time regenerating results or functionality or from needlessly searching for materials or information.

One way to keep track of where research materials are located, and to enable resource sharing, is to create a central repository with a well-organized hierarchical structure. The organization will help everyone know where to find specific items. If the materials are stored on a computer, using a revision control system like cvs or svn to create this repository can be helpful. Revision control systems allow users to work on personal copies of the repository when appropriate and then propagate their changes to other users by copying their work into the central repository. These systems keep track of older versions of items in the repository, which reduces the likelihood of losing work accidentally. They also allow changes to the central repository to be reverted if those changes cause problems.

Another habit to acquire is documenting everything you produce. Experimental infrastructure and results can take a long time to construct and may be extremely complicated. What is obvious to you during creation may not be obvious to you months later or to another researcher. Consequently, whenever you create some form of tool or result, you should document it. If you write code, you should thoroughly comment on that code. If you create a proof or algorithm, you should accompany it with a detailed explanation of the different steps and the reasoning for each step. Be explicit and err on the side of more description and explanation. You should also create a README file explaining where to find the different components of your work as well as what those components are and how they are expected to be used.

Insuring correctness

Whenever you create some sort of solution (e.g., algorithm, proof, software), you need to test your solution for correctness. Each test should be as simple as possible and still test the desired condition. Simple tests allow you to check the actual correctness of your results, not just whether the results are in the right ballpark. You should test your solution in both the common or expected cases as well as the anomalous or unexpected cases. This should include testing at boundary conditions (see “More on Testing”).

When working on solutions that will be refined over long periods of time, it becomes extremely important to test your solution after every modification. Changes may work well for new scenarios but cause failures on previously tested scenarios. Consequently, it is essential that solutions be tested on all scenarios after each change. Creating a test suite, in which you continually add new tests (but rarely remove older tests), can ensure that you quickly discover when modifications violate earlier correctness.

Validating the relative benefits of your approach

To convince researchers about the benefits of your approach, you need to compare your solution to existing solutions and show how and when your solution is preferable. This requires the generation of results that can be directly compared to results presented in related work. When you reach the point of collecting results, you want to determine how to generate results for this comparison and build that capability into your research materials.

During your initial reading of papers, you probably read about existing approaches. The methodology details in those papers provide you with the information (e.g., configuration of test environment or inputs) you need to recreate the test scenarios for your comparison. You want to test your solution using the same test setups used by these researchers. If you are lucky, there will be consensus about the test scenarios used in the related work; if not, choose scenarios used by solutions considered to be the “best” solutions in the existing research.

The environment that your solution is targeting may be sufficiently different from the testing environments used in related work. If this is the case, you may need to implement the solutions proposed in the related work and collect results for those solutions in this different environment. It is important to implement these existing solutions as faithfully as possible. If aspects of the approaches are not well specified, determine what the optimistic and pessimistic approaches would be. You can then either acquire results for both cases or gather results that would be considered optimistic. By comparing your work to an optimistic version of existing research, you insure that your solution will look that much more impressive.

Keeping track of related work

When you first started your research project, you probably read a number of papers, learning about the different issues and solutions proposed by other researchers. As you continue doing research, you will continue to read papers, learning more about this subject and related topics. If you plan to present your research results (e.g., poster, paper, or presentation), you will need to be able to explain how your research fits into the context of related work, citing specific papers to support your argument. A little effort can help you organize your thoughts about how different research approaches (including your approach) fit into the larger problem space.

After reading a research paper, it is useful to reflect on the paper’s contributions, weaknesses, and future work and how the paper relates to your research. Because you will want to remember and potentially revisit your insight into this work, you should create a written reflection or critique that you can refer to later. You should keep these critiques in a single location, such as a research notebook, to prevent them being misplaced.

It is also a good idea to keep an ongoing bibliography of papers that you have read in order to make it easy for you to cite related work in your final presentation. You want to keep information that would be used for a citation (i.e., authors, title, publication, publication date) as well as a summary of the paper. If you have written a critique of the paper, indicate the location (e.g., page number or date in a research notebook) of the critique in your bibliography notes so you can easily refer back to your full critique. Computer scientists frequently store these citations in BibTeX to easily reference them from papers written using LaTeX.

Improving your research efficiency

Because research is open ended, it can be easy to get distracted from your primary research goal by interesting tangents. Additionally, indecision and the absence of well-defined goals and deadlines can impede students from making measurable progress. Adopting habits that add structure to your activities and taking advantage of feedback opportunities can help you overcome these challenges and improve your research efficiency.

Learning from others

As you do research, you are going to have questions, run into problems, or not know how to proceed. When should you ask for help? You do not want to spend hours searching for an answer that someone can provide in a short e-mail, but you also do not want to ask for help if you can quickly find the answer yourself. Similarly, you do not want to tie yourself up in mental knots and not make progress because you are unsure of which approach to take. The answer depends on your distinguishing between when asking for help will be better in terms of your research efficiency and skill development than finding answers on your own.

Questions usually relate to either specific details or to high-level design. Many detail-oriented questions should be easy to answer independently. If you are using a tool, searching the online documentation or looking through code comments may provide answers to many questions. You can also search the online archive of the tool’s user mailing list or enter the text of the tool’s error message into an Internet search engine. Similarly, questions about how to do something in a programming language or the standard way of using a mathematical or statistical technique can be explored via textbooks or online resources. When these approaches fail, consider asking research group members and then your research adviser. However, if a colleague can immediately and effortlessly provide an answer versus your taking hours to find the answer, you should ask the colleague.

When you are unsure which path to pursue, you are dealing with high-level design questions. You want to discuss these concerns with other researchers, including research group members and your research adviser. For example, they may be questions about missing pieces of an algorithm or protocol or questions about how two system components function together in real systems. Or, they may be questions about how to design experimental tests. You should take the time to think about the problem and its possible solutions, including advantages and disadvantages of each approach. This prepares you for explaining your ideas to researchers who have limited knowledge about your specific approach but nonetheless can provide insightful suggestions. When a researcher responds with a solution, ask them to explain their reasoning so that you can understand their thought process. This will help develop your skills at creating your own solutions.

Finally, you should not be afraid of discussing your research with other researchers. It is an important aspect of the research process. Other people can help you see problems and brainstorm solutions. Do not wait until you have a perfect solution or perfect results. As soon as you have analyzed your results, you should share them with other researchers to see if they agree with your observations and conclusions and find out if they have any other feedback. They may point out a flaw in your algorithm or an exciting new implication for this work that you had not realized.

Creating goals and deadlines

Some students struggle to make significant research progress because research frequently does not have hard deadlines. To avoid this pitfall, you need to create your own research deadlines and treat them as equally as important and firm as course deadlines. One way of creating deadlines is to divide tasks into a hierarchy of goals, each with its own deadline. For example, you may want to obtain some result by the end of the semester. That goal can be decomposed into subcomponents of work that must be completed to reach the larger goal. For each subcomponent, you want to determine how long it should take to complete it. You then want to break these subcomponents into finer-grained tasks and set deadlines for these smaller tasks. Your objective is to create sets of tasks, where each can be completed in approximately a week. You can then decompose those tasks into smaller tasks that can be completed in a day or two.

The hardest aspect of this process is judging how long each task will take. To accomplish a given task, you may need to learn about something else (e.g., an existing tool or technique) or correct a mistake that you only discover when tackling this new work. Additionally, you may overestimate how much time you have to work on a problem in a given week or how quickly you work. With experience, you will improve your ability to judge the amount of time required of each task. Until then, be conservative in your estimates. You do not want to have the feeling of never meeting expectations.

Low productivity may also be the cause of missed deadlines. One way to evaluate your productiveness is to keep a log of how you spend time dedicated to working on research. Keeping track of time in 15-min increments will enable you to see if you are getting distracted from your research. It can also help you identify whether or not you are spending time learning nonpertinent information. Just because you are working does not mean the work you are doing is helping you make research progress; you need to stay focused on tasks that move your research forward.

Tracking your progress

One pitfall related to setting many small deadlines is that it can be easy to lose track of the big picture. Failing to remember what you are trying to achieve at a high level can easily erode motivation and productivity. Thus, in addition to making research progress, you need to keep track of your research progress toward those high-level goals. Doing so will keep you motivated and focused on completing tasks that actually need to be accomplished. Additionally, if you have kept track of your activities, the locations of different pieces of work or results, and the observations and conclusions from your work in an orderly manner, it will be relatively easy to construct a final presentation about your research.

Keeping a research notebook

A traditional way of tracking research progress is the use of a research notebook. A research notebook may be a physical notebook or it may be a computer file or a wiki or a blog. You should choose whatever medium works for you.

Research notebooks contain items related to your research with each entry being dated. The content of entries will vary widely depending on what you are working on. An entry may contain information you have learned to move forward on a problem. It may include your write-up of related research or the particulars of some tool or technique. Depending on the research area, it may include proof details or information about experiments such as the experimental setup and results. Those results may be accompanied with analysis and any related intuition, insight, or questions. Another type of entry may specify the precise steps that need to be performed next and any information that you need to proceed.

The research notebook can also be a great place to flesh out ideas or concerns. For example, you might write an argument for your approach to your research or about the assumptions you are making. This can help you clarify why you are pursuing a specific research question in a certain way and why it is better than alternative approaches. You can also brainstorm complementary or alternate approaches for future work. Writing these thoughts down may help you think of issues you have not considered previously. It can be useful to occasionally review entries in your notebook to remind yourself of your previous insights.

While a research notebook is good for tracking daily progress, you might find it difficult to refer back to specific information quickly. For example, you may have accumulated notes about how to use a tool over several months’ worth of entries. At some point, you may want to consider consolidating those notes into a single document. Or, you may want to create an index of write-ups of related work written in your research notebook. Over time, you will determine how best to organize and use it, but it is probably best to initially write everything related to your research in your notebook.

Creating weekly reports and research meetings

At the end of every week, you should review the progress you made and how it contributes or moves your research forward with respect to your high-level goals. You should also write down the next steps for your research. It may be useful to do this review in the form of specific questions that you answer. William J. Dally at Stanford University asks his research students to send him weekly e-mails answering the following questions:

  • What were your goals for last week?
  • What did you accomplish?
  • What problems did you encounter, how did you deal with them, and what did you learn?
  • What are your goals for next week?
  • What are your longer-term (month, quarter, year, until graduation, ten years, life) goals?

The answers need not be long. The point of keeping a written log of your answers is to keep you motivated and to make sure your short-term goals are aligned with your long-term research (and life) goals.

This write-up can also help provide you with a starting point for discussion with your research adviser about your progress. If your discussion with your adviser alters your next steps, you should create a revised version of your write-up immediately after your meeting and send that updated version to your adviser to make sure both of you are clear on your plans.

Incrementally creating a research summary

Another way to stay motivated is to create a summary of your research that you gradually add to and refine as your research progresses. For example, create a write-up either in the form of a paper or presentation slides. Common components include the problem, related work, insight, the proposed solution, experimental framework, experiments, and what constitutes success, results, future work, and conclusions.

Before you actually start doing experiments, you should write summaries for the first four or five sections. As you collect results, you can add them into this framework. Also, as your understanding of your research matures, you should update previously written sections with your enhanced understanding. Revisiting these sections will have the added benefit of reminding you of your high-level goals.

Over the course of your research experience, you should share these write-ups with other researchers and your adviser so they can give you feedback that improves your understanding and your presentation skills. At the end of your research experience, you will then have a completed presentation.

Further developing research skills

When you begin doing research, you may do things because your research adviser suggested you do them, and you may not understand the rationale behind the suggestions. It may seem like your research adviser magically knows what to recommend next.

Doing research well is not magic. Research is a process that can be learned like any other process, such as playing the piano. It takes years of lessons and practice to become a skilled pianist, and it involves becoming good at a variety of subcomponent tasks. All of this is true for research too. You get better at doing research with practice, so you should not stop doing research if your first attempt does not turn out perfectly. Consequently, you should dedicate a small amount of time each week to enhancing your knowledge of doing research in your area or developing other useful skills.

Taking time to learn about the process can make your research process more understandable. One way to do this is to read books that explain various aspects of the research process. For example, David J. Lilja’s Measuring Computer Performance: A Practitioner’s Guide describes approaches for doing computer systems research. A complementary way of learning about the process is to be cognizant of the approaches and techniques used to accomplish different tasks in the papers you read about in related work.

For example, you may notice that the methodologies used across different papers vary, allowing researchers to explore different questions and solutions. The type of infrastructure (i.e., tools) used to collect data or perform experiments may enable different types of questions to be asked. Different workloads or inputs may be chosen to reflect the needs of different application domains. Or, different mathematical techniques may enable certain approaches to mathematical work.

Similarly, it can be instructive to note the set of experiments used and try to understand the reason for those choices. For example, what inputs or parameters were changed for each experiment and why? If results were sampled, what is the rationale for doing so and how was the sampling conducted? If inputs were randomly generated, what distributions were used to generate the inputs? In addition to the primary metric used to evaluate a research idea, what supporting results were collected and did they support the authors’ argument?

It can also be useful to learn about techniques used for evaluating and presenting results. For example, what statistics were used to evaluate the results? Was a more complicated analysis technique such as clustering used? What is clustering, and when is it appropriate to use? How were data presented in graphs? What was the benefit of showing data in three dimensions versus two?

Knowing about the many tools and approaches available can make it easier to understand future papers that you read. More importantly, this knowledge can help you decide which, if any, of the approaches you have previously seen are appropriate to use in your research. You may realize you lack some background knowledge or skill that would improve your research effectiveness. For example, you may need to improve your software development skills or learn statistics to improve your ability to analyze results. If gaining proficiency in an area will make it easier or faster for your research to progress, you should dedicate a small portion of time every week to learning that topic. By observing how other researchers perform research, you can discover how to develop your skills to become a stronger and more productive researcher.

Final thoughts

Research can be enjoyable for both the student and the research adviser, especially when progress is being made. Once you have moved beyond the initial phase of starting a new project, becoming organized in the allocation of your time will make your effort more productive. This article has presented some suggestions on how to add order to a process that can initially seem very fluid and poorly defined. While you need not incorporate all of the ideas at once, consider incorporating one or two that would help with areas you consider weaker in your research experience.

More on Testing

When you create some solution or infrastructure on which to perform experiments, you need to ensure that it is as correct as you can make it. Depending on the type of research, ensuring correctness in your setting may be a very different process than what is required by researchers in a different setting.

For example, if you are performing experiments in a physical lab setting, you will want to make sure that your equipment is producing the expected results for known test cases, such as for a calibration standard or a known chemical compound. That way, you will know that all of the individual pieces of equipment are functioning correctly and at the level of accuracy needed for you to collect reliable results. Your tests could also include calibrating equipment under a variety of conditions, perhaps checking the full range of large and small signals over which it will be used, and perhaps accounting for environmental variables like accidental bumps or changes in ambient temperature.

However, if you are using software to model the different components of a particular system, the required testing process will be quite different. For example, if you have created software to simulate a specific chip architecture, you likely will have created software to model the processors, caches, interconnection network, and memory. Each of those individual components needs to be tested for correctness. Additionally, the functioning of those individual components together to model the entire system must be tested. For example, basic testing of the cache may involve creating a small sequence of read and write data accesses, which is sent to the cache. Because the sequence of requests is small, you can determine what exactly should happen in the cache on every data access and verify that the cache is acting correctly on every data access. You would want to try different streams of requests to insure the cache works correctly for common data access patterns as well as for pathological data access patterns. Knowing that these simple cases work will build your confidence in your cache simulator. By connecting this cache to one other cache via an interconnection network, you can create a small scale system that enables you to hand verify the correctness of your cache coherence protocol. You can then initiate larger tests with more caches where you cannot track each individual data access, but you can collect aggregate information and confirm that information agrees with the understood behavior of cache coherent systems. The key component being that you test for exact correctness on a small scale and then look for adherence to well-established expectations for larger, more complex tests.

Testing the correctness of an algorithm may require an entirely different approach to the two mentioned above. The approach taken to testing may include proving the complexity of the algorithm. It may also include evaluating the correctness of your approach for different sets of assumptions. It may be the case that your algorithm was originally created to solve a very specific problem that occurs only under very specific conditions. While you may not intend to use your algorithm under any other circumstances, it is still important to evaluate whether the algorithm continues to work well under broader conditions or completely separate conditions. Specifically, you will likely need to prove what the boundaries are for which your algorithm is guaranteed to be both sound and complete. This understanding will enable you or other researchers to apply your approach as appropriate to future problems or stop using it when it is inappropriate for a given situation.

Concerns about methodology

Methodology is a crucial piece of any research and needs to be well thought out and well documented to convince readers of the validity of your results. However, appropriate methodology depends completely on the specific type of research being performed and is, therefore, hard to generalize. For example, in a physical lab setting, there may be several ways to collect data about some phenomenon. Of the existing approaches, one may be more applicable if you are researching a particular metric or result than the other approaches. One technique may be more expensive (in terms of time or money) than is necessary to collect the data needed to support your hypothesis, or one approach may not collect results at the level of accuracy needed by your research. All of these considerations, in addition to the availability of lab equipment, may influence what questions you can ask in your research and which techniques you use to conduct your research. In other research areas, software tools may be used to conduct research instead of physical equipment. For example, in computer systems work, researchers frequently create software to model the system under study (i.e., simulators) and then use data sets or software applications as inputs to that system (i.e., workloads). What software you choose to model the system has a huge impact on what types of research you can pursue (e.g., chip multiprocessors versus graphics processors) and how accurately you can model the components of that system (e.g., cycle accurate network simulation). Additionally, the inputs to the system define what types of problems you are tackling as some workloads are geared for graphics domains while others are geared for database and other commercial workloads. For more theoretical work, the methodology may include which type of mathematical approaches are considered valid for modeling different environments or problems. For example, if you choose to use a queuing theoretic approach to analyzing a problem, you need to choose the appropriate model (e.g., open, closed, or mixed) for the system you are researching. Similar to computer systems work, you may also have to choose inputs for your model (e.g., arrival and service distributions) that best approximate the activity in the system you are trying to analyze. Additionally, the models initially chosen may be simple but less realistic. However, as you delve deeper into your research and your questions become more precise, it may be necessary to start using more complex and realistic models.

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  • How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

Structure of a research proposal

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

  • Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

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Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

  • Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
  • Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

  • The proposed title of your project
  • Your supervisor’s name
  • Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

  • Introduce your topic
  • Give necessary background and context
  • Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

  • Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
  • How much is already known about the topic
  • What is missing from this current knowledge
  • What new insights your research will contribute
  • Why you believe this research is worth doing

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

  • Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
  • Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
  • Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

  • Improving best practices
  • Informing policymaking decisions
  • Strengthening a theory or model
  • Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
  • Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

  • Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
  • Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
  • Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

  • Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
  • Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
  • Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

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

Methodology

  • Sampling methods
  • Simple random sampling
  • Stratified sampling
  • Cluster sampling
  • Likert scales
  • Reproducibility

 Statistics

  • Null hypothesis
  • Statistical power
  • Probability distribution
  • Effect size
  • Poisson distribution

Research bias

  • Optimism bias
  • Cognitive bias
  • Implicit bias
  • Hawthorne effect
  • Anchoring bias
  • Explicit bias

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

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Starting steps for research project success

organization when doing a research project helps you to

Research projects are an important part of a student’s academic career. They’re an integral part of the learning process, providing students with the opportunity to explore a particular topic in-depth, develop research skills, and make an original contribution to their field of study.

That said, they can also be a source of stress for many students, particularly if it’s their first time writing a research project. The best way to approach a project of this size is to break it down into smaller steps and ensure you’ve laid the groundwork before you even begin writing.

In this article, we’ll look at different elements of beginning a research project, including writing a proposal, starting steps, and how to use monday.com to organize all your research and tasks in one place.

What is a research project?

A research project is an organized effort to investigate a specific question or topic. It can involve either quantitative or qualitative research methods and can include surveys, interviews, or literature reviews.

The goal of a research project is to answer a question or hypothesis by exploring new ideas and testing theories.

In an academic setting, research projects are typically conducted by students, faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, or graduate students, and may involve collaborations with outside organizations.

How to write a research project proposal

Before beginning to write a research project, you need to first write a proposal. A research project proposal is a document used to outline the specific goals, methods, and resources required for a research project. It’s used to present the planned research to potential sponsors or other stakeholders in order to receive approval to proceed with the project.

There are several elements to include in a project proposal that will not only help guide your research but help show why your topic is relevant and worth pursuing.

  • Title: Develop a clear and concise title for your research project proposal.
  • Introduction: Give background, including the purpose and importance of the research.
  • Objectives: List the specific objectives of your research project.
  • Methodology: Describe the methods and techniques you will use.
  • Resources: Describe the resources you will need to carry out your project.
  • Timeline: Provide a timeline for completion and bring up any potential obstacles or risks.
  • Expected outcomes: Identify the expected outcomes, including possible implications.
  • Budget: Estimate the costs of completing the project and any necessary funding.
  • References: Provide references that you’ll cite that help prove your topic is relevant.

Looking at examples of other research project proposals will be helpful to visualize what yours should look like. Here are examples of successful project proposals in the field of social policy and criminology as well as a Ph.D. project in politics .

A project proposal template from monday.com can help you build out your project proposal. This template will ensure that you aren’t missing any essential elements that can result in your research project getting rejected or needing to edit and resubmit a new proposal.

5 starting steps for writing a research project

While there are many different steps to the writing portion of a research project, the initial setup of your project will not only set you up for success but will make the writing go a lot more smoothly. Here are five steps you should take when you’re just starting your research project.

1. Find the right supervisor

A good supervisor will provide guidance on the design, methods, and structure of your research project, as well as advice on how to best analyze and interpret data. A good way to find the right supervisor is to speak with faculty members in a department, a trusted professor, or a colleague to discuss who might be the best fit. When you have a list of potential advisors, send them an email to introduce yourself and your project before asking to meet to discuss the next steps.

2. Choose your topic

After finding a supervisor, they may be able to help you narrow down your topic. The more specific your topic, the better you’ll be able to sharpen the direction of your research so that you can explore your topic in greater depth. It can also save time by allowing you to tighten the scope of your research and focus on the most relevant aspects of the topic.

3. Develop a thesis

A thesis serves as the main point or argument and provides direction and focus to a project, allowing you to collect and organize information more efficiently. A clear and concise thesis statement guides readers in understanding the project’s purpose and ensures that readers will be able to follow the main thread of your argument.

4. Create a timeline

When you begin your research, it’s important to create a timeline to set a framework for the project and ensure that it’s completed on time. It also keeps you organized on various tasks and ensures all steps are accounted for, from researching to writing and editing. Finally, a timeline can help you stay motivated and on track.

5. Write your outline

Outlines provide structure and clarity and allow you to organize your thoughts in a logical order. An outline serves as a roadmap for your research, allowing you to focus on the important points and not get sidetracked. It may also help identify gaps in your research, which can be addressed before beginning the writing process.

monday.com can help you organize your research project

Given all the different steps to take before you even begin writing, staying organized and on top of each task will ensure your project runs seamlessly. Project management tools such as monday.com can help you stay organized so that you don’t overlook an important step in your project. There are a few specific monday.com features that make it an excellent tool for anyone working on a research project.

Track your project with timelines

project timeline in monday.com

Create a timeline to see when different elements of your research project are due and see if you’re on time with your project proposal’s timeline.

Organize your tasks in one place

task management in monday.com

There are tons of small tasks in each research project, from planning a project, collecting and organizing data, communications, surveying, and more. With monday.com’s task management tools, you can make sure you’ve accounted for all tasks you need to complete so that you don’t miss a thing.

Use a template to make a visual plan

The student planner template allows you to visualize your project plan. Not only is this a good place to track tasks, but you can also add in information such as budgets, contact information, priorities, and even attach files for each access to your project’s information all in one place.

How do you start a research project?

When starting a research project, the first step is to create a research question or hypothesis that will be the focus of the project. Next, you’ll want to begin gathering information, finding a supervisor, forming your thesis, and outlining your project.

What are some examples of research projects?

Research projects vary widely depending on the field. For example, in biology, some research projects have focused on investigating the effects of a medication or therapy on a specific group of patients or looking at the role of genetics in disease.

How do I find a research project topic?

There are many different ways to find a topic. For starters, consider which topics interest you. From there, you can research online, speak with professors or advisors, and attend conferences and workshops to find ideas.

Make sure you have all you need to start writing

Writing a research project takes a lot of time, dedication, and focus. They can also be stressful, especially if it’s your first time writing one. Following the steps and guidelines here will make your research project more successful. Additionally, using a project management work tool like monday.com to organize your research project is one of the best ways to alleviate the stress of staying on top of your tasks and timeline so that you can better focus on the research itself.

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    The tools you need to make your research project a success. This toolkit includes a variety of tools for managing your research projects including recommendations for general project management software and tools to help you and your team manage activities from grant writing to implementation and project closeout. Explore the toolkit below:

  16. Effective In-Organization Research: Strategies and Insights

    Ideally, you developed the research plan in a highly collaborative manner with a Project Team that includes some members of the organization. The organization might be a team, department, or overall organization. You might be doing research as part of an overall organizational evaluation or as a consultant doing the Discovery Phase of consulting.

  17. Organizing your research and developing your skills

    Organizing your research and developing your skills. May 1, 2020 by Kelly A. Shaw. Working on research can be a lot of fun, even exhilarating when you first start on a project. There are so many new things to learn in the area on which you are working and so many new techniques and experiments to try. It can also be overwhelming as you realize ...

  18. How to Write a Research Proposal

    A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement, ... A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., ...

  19. PDF Developing a Research Action Plan for Your Organization

    Introduction. The Action Plan is a guide to planning for change, and it describes: . A clear picture of where you are currently, where you are going, and where you want to be in 3-5 years. How you are going to get there. Who and what are involved. Elements of the Action Plan. Goal(s) Objectives.

  20. Choosing a Research Project and a Research Mentor

    Table 1. Key Points in Choosing a Research Project or Laboratory. Find people to help guide you: Find an area, field or project of personal interest: Find a defined, "do-able" project: The project should be worth doing, the question worth answering: Balance your ideas and your independence with those of others

  21. Starting steps for research project success

    Here are five steps you should take when you're just starting your research project. 1. Find the right supervisor. A good supervisor will provide guidance on the design, methods, and structure of your research project, as well as advice on how to best analyze and interpret data.

  22. Organization when doing a research project helps you

    Answer: Organization in research will help you stay focused throughout the writing process and help ensure proper flow of idea . It also helps you with time management. Gives you proper outline in writing your research. Help in proper data collation and drafting. Organization gives you clarity on what you have done and what to do next?

  23. Organization when doing a research project helps you to A ...

    Organization when doing a research project helps you to A. quickly find a useful site again, cite your sources properly, and avoid plagiarism. B. list magazines, list newspapers, and use websites. C. create projects, create power points, and create posters. D. use Google, create an annotated bibliography, and set your fonts in a word processing program.