Designing and Managing Your Research Project: Core Skills for Social and Health Research

Emerging researchers need a range of specific skills to plan and successfully complete their research projects. While there are multiple books available on methods, there is much less information on the key skills needed to complete a project.

Designing and Managing Your Research Project provides information about the key areas needed for a successful project. It includes software skills, developing research objectives, writing proposals, literature reviews, getting ethics approval, seeking funding, managing a project, communicating research findings, and writing reports. There is also a chapter on working as an independent researcher.

Designing and Managing Your Research Project includes numerous examples, checklists, and practical exercises designed to assist the learning of research skills and the completion of crucial project tasks. It covers procedures needed for conducting projects electronically and accessing information from the Internet.

This book is designed to complement texts covering quantitative and qualitative research methods in health and social sciences. It will be particularly useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students planning theses and dissertations and other researchers in the early stages of their career.

David R. Thomas is Emeritus Professor in Social and Community Health at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is currently a research and evaluation consultant and runs workshops on research methods. Specialist areas include evaluation research, survey research, qualitative methods, proposal writing and management of projects. His publications include 65 journal articles and book chapters and two books. Ian D. Hodges has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Otago and has worked for over 25 years as a researcher in the New Zealand health and disability sector. He has designed and managed research projects on numerous topics and authored more than 80 research reports. Currently he is the co-director of HealthSearch Ltd, an independent research consultancy.