Quicklinks
Interested in research but not sure where to start? Or looking for some guidance to help you progress your research?
Browse our curated list of resources below.
Planning a research project
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Here is the link to a Research Education Workshop conducted by Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health on PICO – Good answers start with good questions | |
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When you have decided on your research question and study design it is time to write a protocol. You will need this for Ethics. The EQUATOR NETWORK is a fabulous resource that is a repository for study protocol and publishing checklists. | https://www.equator-network.org/ |
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Our colleagues again from the Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health have made education videos on study designs that mostly collect quantitative data in 2 parts. |
Part 1 https://clipchamp.com/watch/wz2nq77Eoj0 Part 2 https://clipchamp.com/watch/D8dTP1tr3bf |
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And here is the Murtupuni for Rural and Remote Health talking about study designs for projects that mostly collect qualitative data | https://clipchamp.com/watch/VrEraQ9I8Ef |
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Listen to Alice Cairns from the Murtupuni for Rural and Remote Health talk about the importance of conducting service evaluations and determining what outcomes are important. As Alice says, it just might make a difference between your service being axed or not! | https://clipchamp.com/watch/q2fUpMrR0b2 |
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This is a website from the Knowledge Synthesis team in Canada. It guides you on how to determine what type of review might be best suited to your research question. | https://rightreview.knowledgetranslation.net/ |
Getting going on research
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This is an excellent Cochrane Systematic Review from 2018 that reports the best ways to recruit for randomised controlled trials | https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.MR000013.pub6/full |
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This is a short video from Cochrane to show you how to apply a highly sensitive search strategy to find randomised control trials in Medline. This video will take 8 minutes and 30 seconds to watch. |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPoJwj58EAs |
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Here is the link to a Research Education Workshop conducted by Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health on Literature Searching. | https://clipchamp.com/watch/ChqhpHQunBh |
Doing the research
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This is an excellent online resource for qualitative analysis. It is a link to the book “Successful Qualitative Research, A practical guide for beginners” by Braun and Clarke. The book is full of helpful guidance on conducting thematic analysis. You can rent or buy the book |
https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/successful-qualitative-research/book233059 |
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Here is a great link to some Cochrane Risk of Bias tools to help you complete for a systematic review | |
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For those of you doing a systematic review, this video is a brief introduction (12 minutes) to the GRADE methods of rating the quality of the research evidence from the Master Gordon Guyatt. | https://vimeo.com/779978267 |
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For those of you doing a review (systematic or scoping), here is a website that has free automation tools to help with searching, deduplicating publications from multiple sources, screening articles for your review and even to help with dispute resolution between 2 independent reviewers! | https://sr-accelerator.com/#/ |
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Datacamp is on online learning platform that offers courses, tracks and certifications in data science, statistics and programming. Many of its courses can be take for free and its introductory R courses are a great tool for those looking to learn the R language | https://www.datacamp.com/ |
Completing the research
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You have submitted your manuscript and now have reviewer comments. How do you address them? Here is a short, interesting blog from Paul Glasziou about how he thinks about responding to reviewers | https://healthy-evidence.com/2022/09/21/how-to-make-responding-to-reviewers-almost-fun/ |
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Here is the link to a Research Education Workshop conducted by Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health on Abstract Writing and Presentation by Santosh Jatrana. | https://clipchamp.com/watch/NjxiCCb5AtE |
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If writing is hard for you, try out this tool to find new ways of writing some key sentences in your paper. | https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/reporting-results/ |
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If you need to write a manuscript but aren't sure where to start, check out this step-by-step guide to writing a scientific article | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878764915001606 |
Getting research into practice
Resources for Evidence-Based Practice
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A colleague from Canada, James McCormack does some incredible ‘songs’ to illustrate EBP principles and research practices. Here is his parody about why you should look carefully at clinical practice guidelines. This is a song designed to get you thinking about the problem with strictly following cardiovascular guidelines/target shooting and NOT using evidence to help you and your patient make decisions. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij8bPX8IINg |
Critical Appraisal tools for Journal Clubs and Systematic Review Risk of Bias requirements
Respositories for Critical Appraisal Tools
Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP)
These are the most widely used critical appraisal tools by clinicians. The CASP tools cover most study designs and have pdf forms, print and fill forms, and the trusty word documents. This website has a “how to use” guide!
JBI Critical Appraisal Tools
Similarly, The Johanna Briggs Institute (JBI) has a series of critical appraisal tools for clinicians/researchers. What I really like about these ones are the detailed explanations at the end of the actual tool.
Interpreting research to improve clinical practice
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Here is the link to a great series of papers published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that teach you how to read and interpret different kinds of research articles. | https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-readers/publications/how-read-paper |
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Here are a series of short videos from The Winton Centre describing odds ratio, relative and absolute risk, hazard ratios, why researchers adjust for confounding factors, and correlation vs causation. They are really short and really engaging! |
A guide to odds ratio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixKhS0Silb4&t=7s Relative vs absolute risks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELNt0XZYsAQ A guide to hazard ratios https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHsdpg1OOf0 Why researchers adjust for confounding factors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8J2L_g76c4 Correlation vs causation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bT17r_yIrw |
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What is the difference between statistically significant results and clinically significant results. Checkout this read from Students for Best Evidence. | https://s4be.cochrane.org/blog/2017/03/23/statistical-significance-vs-clinical-significance/ |
Research Translation Resources
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This is a 15 minute explanation of the Behaviour Change Wheel from one of the developers Robert West | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itp7Qo6L5Pc&t=69s |
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If you are thinking about running a journal club, you MUST check out Rachel Wenke’s website “TREAT Journal Clubs”. Lots of really important tips here to help them run smoothly AND be relevant! | https://www.treatjournalclubs.com/ |
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An interesting read. Of how some researchers developed a conceptual framework to determine the ‘implementability’ of healthcare interventions. | https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-021-01171-7 |
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Do implementing and de-implementing interventions use different behaviour change techniques? Check out this article from 2021. | https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-021-01089-0 |
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This is a great website to help plan a translation project, identify and select a theory, model or framework to guide your project, and work through some of the crucial processes to help your translation project succeed. | https://dissemination-implementation.org/ |
Community engagement and co-design resources
Engagement and co-design with community is an increasingly important aspect of research and spans the entire lifecycle of research, from planning, getting started, doing, dissemination and translation. Here are some resources to help you across your research project lifecyle.
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Great explainer from Metro North Hospital and Health Service on co-design | https://metronorth.health.qld.gov.au/get-involved/co-design |
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Some existing tool kit for community engagement |
International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) https://planh.ca/sites/default/files/tools-resources/communityengagement_guide_web_v1.0.pdf NHMRC website https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/consumer-and-community-engagement Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI) NSW Health toolkit https://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/projects/co-design WA Council of Social Service https://www.wacoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/co-design-toolkit-combined-2-1.pdf Consumers Health Forum of Australia https://chf.org.au/experience-based-co-design-toolkit Western Australian Health Translation Network https://wahtn.org/platforms/consumer-and-community-involvement/cci-handbook/ |
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Some other useful resources that examine how to engage with consumers and communities |
NHS (UK) National Standards for Public Involvement in Research https://www.invo.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Public_Involvement_Standards_v1.pdf Healthcare Consumers Queensland https://www.hcq.org.au/kitchentablediscussions/ Queensland Health, First Nations Equity https://www.health.qld.gov.au/public-health/groups/atsihealth/making-tracks-together-queenslands-atsi-health-equity-framework Queensland Government Multicultural Policy https://www.cyjma.qld.gov.au/resources/dcsyw/multicultural-affairs/policy-governance/multicultural-policy.pdf Consumers Health Forum of Australia Website https://www.chf.org.au/about-chf Health Consumers Queensland Remuneration and Reimbursement https://www.hcq.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Consumer-Remuneration-Rates-Dec-2015.pdf |
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Some interesting reads on how to approach and think about consumer and community engagement |
The mind sets required for meaningful engagement https://www.beyondstickynotes.com/mindsets-for-codesign NHS (UK) what makes good public involvement in research? https://www.invo.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Top-Tips-1-What-makes-good-public-involvement-v1.pdf Public Health Research & Practice (June 2022) Series of papers describing co-production, co-creation and co-design https://www.saxinstitute.org.au/news/media/more-than-a-slogan-the-opportunities-and-challenges-of-co-production-in-public-health-research/ Greenhalgh T, Hinton L, Finlay T, Macfarlane A, Fahy N, Clyde B, Chant A. Frameworks for supporting patient and public involvement in research: Systematic review and co-design pilot. Health Expectations, 2019;22785-801 Cockbill SA, May A, Mitchell V. The assessment of meaningful outcomes from co-design: a case study from the energy sector. J Design, economics, and Innovation, 2019;188-208 |