Academic Research: Planning Research

Research is “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.”
45 CFR 46.102(d)

Research is a systematic process of collecting and analyzing information in order to increase our understanding of the phenomenon about which we are interested.

• Is not information searching and gathering
• Is not a process 
• Is not interchanging facts between locations
• Is not a hard persistence in the search for information 
• Is not a linear process 

Scientific research and scholarly communication are governed by principles of scientific integrity and shared values in scientific research. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) oversees and directs Public Health Service (PHS) research integrity activities on behalf of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with the exception of the regulatory research integrity activities of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Below are educational resources from ORI on human subject research, research misconduct, conflict of interests and commitment, and teaching responsible conduct of research in humans.

• Human Subject Research 
• Research Misconduct 
• Conflict of Interest and Commitment 
• Teaching Responsible Conduct in Research and Humans 
• What is Plagiarism? 
• ORI Policy on Plagiarism
• Plagiarism Research
• Copyright Law of the United States
• Standards and Operational Guidance for Ethics Review of Health-Related Research with Human Participants
• Revising the 2002 CIOMS Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects
• Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

Plan: 

• Identify the project type
• Choose the research topics
• Identify the research problem
• Conduct the preliminary literature search 
• Plan and conduct literature search
• Select the information resources (primary, secondary, 
• Develop search strategy and terminology 
• Conduct the search 
• Gather and organize reference citations
• Evaluate and synthetize selected articles 
• Write study protocol

Review Literature

• Define - research topics, objective, research question, hypothesis
• Build - concept map
• Select - information resources 
• Construct - literature search
• Search - information resources
• Evaluate - search results 
• Evaluate - information resources 
• Synthetize - selected information resources 
• Cite - information resources used in the study 

Phases

                            Graph by Dr. Tmanova 

Research process includes following phases of conducting research:
 

• Identification of the research problem
• Review literatures
• Research statement
• Research question
• Hypothesis
• Study design 
• Data collection
• Data analysis
• Data interpretation 
• Publication 

Article

• Mayo NE, Asano M, Barbic SP. When is a research question not a research question? J Rehabil Med. 2013 Jun;45(6):513-8.
• Trochim (Ed.) A Special Issue of Evaluation and Program Planning, 12, 1-16.
• Trochim, W. (1989). Concept mapping: Soft science or hard art?  In W. Trochim (Ed.) A Special Issue of Evaluation and Program Planning, 12, 87-110.
• Trochim, W. Reliability of Concept Mapping. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Evaluation Association, Dallas, Texas, November, 1993.  

Tools

• SAGE Research Project Planner