POV: You are a Scientist Starting Research

Imagine you are sitting in your lab, racking your brain over what research project to start next. You’ve hit a metaphorical “researcher’s block” and can’t come up with anything.

This might actually be you one day in your professional career, or even in undergraduate personal research projects. Conducting research can be fun and super interesting, however, the beginning stages of coming up with a topic can sometimes feel tedious and frustrating. Hopefully, the steps below will help introduce this process and assist in making starting your own research easier.

1. Find a subject –> chemistry, psychology, biology, physics, etc. 
   1. Research Areas and Topics | NORC.org
2. Look up topics in your subject and pinpoint what is interesting to you 
3. Look up existing research articles in your topic area and hone in on a more specific problem/question that hasn’t been answered yet 
   1. Or add on to existing research (same study with new population, same study with extra/new independent variable, etc.) 
      1. The best academic research databases [2022 update] – Paperpile
         1. Research Databases | EBSCO
         2. JSTOR Home
4. Decide on a concrete research question 
   1. Operationally define your variables 
      1. Operational Definition – defining variables based on how they will be measured (be specific) 
         1. (3) operational definition – YouTube
   2. Decide if it is plausible with your current time and resources 
   3. Is it ethical? 
      1. What Is Ethics in Research & Why Is It Important? – by David B. Resnik, J.D., Ph.D. (nih.gov)
5. Find more articles pertaining to your research question 
   1. Background information relating to your population, independent and dependent variables, etc. 
6. Revise your question, if needed, after looking at more research 
7. Lay out your methodology 
   1. Will you need any scales (existing or creating one)? 
      1. Types of Data & the Scales of Measurement | UNSW Online
   2. How will you reach out to participants (if needed)? 
      1. Participant Recruitment for Research | Digital Healthcare Research (ahrq.gov)
      2. Will you need to go through the International Review Board (IRB) — necessary when using human participants!
         1. IRB Review Process | Research Ethics & Compliance (umich.edu)
   3. Will you need any advanced equipment? 
8. What is your hypothesis? 
   1. Make it simple, logical, falsifiable, testable, and positive 
      1. Logical – founded in existing research; follows logical argument 
      2. Falsifiable – must be possible to find results contrary to the hypothesis 
      3. Testable – variables must be measurable/observable 
      4. Positive – must be positive in that it establishes the existence of something (such as a relationship, difference, etc.)