Mind the [research] gap

Tara Brabazon (2025) talked about the SOCK - the significant contribution to knowledge - and the research gap in a video last year, citing a...

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Exploding the research question

I have written about the idea of pulling apart the research question before (see here ), but it is really important to ensure that all key c...

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Types of Likert scales

For some reason I don't think I have only ever done one post on Likert scales ( here ). So let's do something about that.  While I a...

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Mapping the research question

I have written about this before (see here ), but it is really important to ensure that all key components of a research question feeds into...

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A fragmented project outline

When we are putting together a project plan, we need to be really careful about what words we chose. We need to ensure that the language we ...

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Answering the research question

Year on year I have research supervisees who remain incredibly shy of saying whether they answered their research question... or by how much...

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What is operationalisation?

When thinking through a research project, we first need to come up with a sound research question: an overarching question that our research...

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Clear methods writing: actual to plan

I had an interesting problem with a student recently, where they were writing the wrong elements in the wrong tense in their methods chapter...

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Research proposal alignment

One thing that I find many research students struggle to get their heads around is that all the elements of the research proposal for their ...

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Data collection questions framework

Where qualitative research is complex, with fragments of data being collected and confirmed across several different data collection questio...

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Creating a set of data collection questions

Data collection questions are largely created from the reading we have done for our literature review. From all the good quality research pa...

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How we ask questions

The way one phrases a question can make a large difference to the answer one receives. I don't think we think enough about this, and i...

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Preparing an Interview Script

As mentioned in other posts (here) the development of the data collection questions takes time, planning and care. We should have develope...

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The interview protocol

When interviewing, it is usually good idea to set up an interview protocol before starting, and prepare a script to print and take with us...

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