There are some perennial challenges to doing a research project that all of us have faced: formulating a research question, wrestling with paradigmatic assumptions, keeping on track of a multi-year project. The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project has been helping students (and supervisors) for more than 20 years. But in a post-pandemic world with the transformations being wrought by artificial intelligence, datafication, and the rise and fall of social media platforms, there are new challenges facing researchers.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Research Design and Planning video collection, a powerful new resource designed to equip researchers with the essential tools and insights to craft high-impact research projects. Whether you're a student, academic, or professional researcher, this collection is your go-to guide for mastering the art and science of research design.

Guest post from Christopher Lamont and Mieczyslaw P Boduszynski , authors of Research Methods in Politics and International Relations, on the importance of methodology in PIR research.

Given the possibility of qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches, what factors affect a choice of one approach over another for the design of a proposal?

Margaret Roller’s and Paul Lavrakas' Total Quality Framework is a straightforward tool for thinking about qualitative research designs. Learn about the TQF and find a collection of resources you can use at the design stage.

Gjoko Muratovski, author of Research for Designers will encourage us to think like designers, and cross disciplines as needed to develop innovative approaches.

There is often an assumption that research can be truly rigorous, or it can be “real world” research, and that the two are somehow mutually exclusive or at polar opposite ends of a spectrum. However, the world is not that black and white, and it is possible to have our cake and eat it, too.

Meet the collaborative team behind Making Sense of Social Research Methodology! They were our Mentors in Residence for February 2021.