Recruiting volunteers
13.1 In or out-patients from your hospital or health care unit In some respects, recruiting from within the health care system is easier and less daunting than going out into…
Collecting your data
12.1 Confidential patient information For each participant in the study you will need to keep a record of their name, address and other contact information. This can be recorded on…
Successful grant applications
Represent excellent quality research Be of value to health professionals Benefit patients Convince the judges that you can deliver the research Offer value for money (which is not necessarily the…
Writing a paper for a journal
17.1 General advice Every journal will have its own style and will give guidance on how to write and format a paper for them. Read and follow this carefully. Do…
Research governance
Ethics Science Information Health, safety and employment Finance and intellectual property Quality research culture The responsibilities of those involved in research Systems to deliver excellence in research Monitoring, inspection and…
Data management and analysis
14.1 Quantitative research Quantitative research follows a very structured, reproducible and definitive stepwise approach. With quantitative analysis your next steps will be: Data entry Clean and check the data for…
Reviewing the literature
4.1 How to search the literature Performing literature searches is a skill well worth acquiring and honing. A brief overview is provided here to help you get started and further…
Critically appraising papers
5.1 How can it help? Critical appraisal offers a way through the huge volume of material now being published. There are over 6000 journals on the ISI science journal citation…
Obtaining approval for your research
10.1 The two routes to ethical approval There are two main routes for obtaining ethical approval: the National Research Ethics Service (NRES) and local university ethics committees. You must first…
Participant consent
11.1 What is informed consent? One definition of informed consent is ‘an ongoing agreement by a person to receive treatment, undergo procedures or participate in research, after risks, benefits and…
