Search across guide titles, topics, keywords, and content throughout the Researcher's Field Guide.
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Research can contribute by changing explanation, adding evidence, improving how research is conducted, or informing practice. Learn how theoretical, empirical, methodological, and practical contributions differ and how to identify what your study actually contributes.
Read Guide →A strong research contribution claim is specific enough to show exactly what the study adds, relative to what was already known, without claiming more than the evidence supports. Learn how to find the right level of specificity.
Read Guide →A contribution claim can fail because it says too little or claims too much. Learn how to recognize weak, vague, and overly broad contributions and recalibrate them to what the study actually adds.
Read Guide →A strong contribution claim does not need inflated language. Learn how to make the most defensible claim your evidence supports without exaggerating novelty, generalizability, theoretical importance, or practical implications.
Read Guide →Research does not always make the contribution you originally expected. Learn how to reassess the evidence, identify what the study actually contributes, and revise the manuscript without rewriting the history of the research.
Read Guide →A research problem and research question can each sound convincing while still pointing in different directions. Learn how to test whether the question actually investigates the problem your study claims to address.
Read Guide →Participatory research changes who contributes to producing knowledge and how influence is distributed across the research process. It does not abandon research rigor or require every decision to be made collectively.
Read Guide →Communities can help identify, develop, refine, and prioritize research questions, particularly when lived or local knowledge is important to deciding what deserves investigation. Community priorities still need to be translated into feasible, ethical, and scientifically answerable research questions.
Read Guide →Research protocols and research proposals often contain similar material, but the terms are not always interchangeable. The clearest distinction is usually their function: a proposal seeks authorization or support for a study, while a protocol specifies how the study will be conducted.
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