five challenges encountered in conducting a research project

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8 Challenges Faced by Researchers (and Tips to Help)

Published on 18 Jan 2023

Being a researcher is a rewarding career for many reasons: You get to explore new ideas, work with cutting-edge technology, learn about the world, and have important discussions with like-minded individuals. 

But, research doesn’t come without its challenges. 

Luckily, challenges get easier to overcome when you don’t feel alone in facing them. So, we’ve put together a list of the top 8 challenges that researchers face and some tips to help.

1. Choosing your research topic

Starting a new research project and narrowing your focus to a single topic is one of the first challenges you’ll learn to face as an early-career researcher . And, it’s also one of the most important ones.

Your topic for each new research project is the foundation on which all your other work rests, so it’s vital that you take your time in tackling this challenge. A well-thought-out topic can also help you avoid some of the challenges that we’ll discuss later in this article.

TIP: Stay flexible and consider all the angles

Obviously, you’re going to want to research something that’s compelling enough to hold your interest. But, picking a good topic requires much more than just deciding what you’re most excited about. 

Start by identifying a few gaps in your research niche along with different angles you could take on each. You don’t have to change the world with your work, but you do want to pinpoint places where you can make a difference (i.e. adding something new to the body of knowledge that exists).

Evaluate each topic for how realistically you can achieve it. What resources do you have available? Are you short on money? Will it be hard to find people (participants or team members)? Are you on a time limit? Take all these factors into consideration to choose a topic that will be manageable for you.

Your final research topic will likely look a lot different from the one you had in your head when you first started out. Stay flexible as you discover potential barriers and develop new angles that you can take to overcome them.

2. Finding research funding

Another common challenge that researchers face is finding the money they need to get the research done. Sometimes this comes alongside the shock of how much the required materials, tools, and assistance will cost. Research is more expensive than most people imagine.

In addition, there are many researchers competing for the same grants and funding. So, the competition can be fierce, especially for early-career researchers and researchers in developing countries .

If you can’t pull together enough funding, you may have to make compromises that limit how effectively and efficiently you can complete your research. Depending on the project requirements, it’s possible you’ll have to postpone your research until enough money is secured.

TIP: Think outside your social and geographical boxes

It’s easy to get discouraged while on the hunt for funding. So, remind yourself that there will always be more opportunities. Start by reaching out to your network. Request letters of support to help you apply for the grants that you’ve identified.

Don’t be afraid to branch out. Search for sources online and apply for funding available from potential international research partners. Just because your own country doesn’t have the funding doesn’t mean there isn’t someone, somewhere else that will pay you to complete your research.

3. Convincing others of the value of your research 

Your research may be important. But, few people will take your word for it without a little convincing. For projects that take a long time to execute or require significant resources, you’ll have to do even more convincing. Unfortunately, the best methods for estimating and demonstrating the impact of research aren’t always clear.

Even after you’ve completed your project, you’ll likely be asked to demonstrate the impact of your research to your funders/stakeholders. This is an important step for solidifying your reputation and that of your research institution.

TIP: Reflect on your research purpose 

Set aside some reflection time throughout the development and execution of your research. Use this time to put your purpose under a microscope. Remind yourself why you began this project, what good has come from it already, and what more can be achieved. Reflection exercises help you maintain confidence in your goal. They also ensure that you always have something relevant to say when someone asks: “So, why should I care?” 

In addition, it never hurts to improve your scientific storytelling skills . Getting people to care about concepts that they don’t fully understand is a difficult task. Storytelling can help you convince varied audiences of the value of your research.

4. Overcoming imposter syndrome

Researchers have to expose themselves and their work to criticism. While others are criticizing the value of your work, it can be hard to maintain a high level of confidence in yourself. And when your work takes a turn you didn’t expect, feelings of self-doubt can easily creep in. 

If you start doubting your own skills and accomplishments, or feel that you’re not as capable as others, you might be experiencing imposter syndrome . It’s a problem that people in all professions face and, in severe cases, it can cause someone to feel like a fraud in spite of all they’ve accomplished.

TIP: Remind yourself of your research (and personal) success

If you’re experiencing feelings of self-doubt, boost your confidence by reviewing past research projects and reminding yourself of your achievements. Lining up the facts in front of you can help with overcoming feelings of inadequacy. If you don’t have a large research record, think about other personal or academic achievements that you’re proud of. 

Seek help from others, whether that’s constructive feedback on your work or advice from a mental health professional. And, consider trying something completely new as a hobby outside of your research. Trying new things can shake you out of your usual thought patterns and, most importantly, it gives you permission to be okay with being “bad” at something. 

5. Building a good research team (or finding collaborators)

Research is rarely done alone. Chances are you’re going to need a research team to support you (or collaborators in the same field of research to connect with).

If you’ve never built a research team before, you may struggle to know where to start. You may not even be sure what kind of people you work well with.

If you’re looking for research collaborators , you’ll quickly realize that your biggest competitors are often your best potential partners. The research community is a complicated environment and the “publish or perish” mentality doesn’t always foster natural cooperation.

TIP: Use all available resources and expand your network

Think about the resources closely available to you. If you’re early in your career, look for mentoring schemes at your institution or apply for funding to attend academic conferences . If you already have a significant network, think about potential collaborators you can reach out to within it.

When you’ve exhausted the closest available options, create more collaboration opportunities and be intentional in growing your network. In particular, consider looking for team members and connections who bring a perspective that challenges your usual way of thinking. 

6. Recruiting research participants (or collecting samples)

Managing participant recruitment and sample collection is a difficult part of many research projects. It’s often the biggest hurdle between the question you have and the data you need to answer it.

Low email open rates, lack of support from institutions, and restrictive regulations are all frustrating for researchers in search of willing (and relevant) research participants. These recruitment issues can become even more prominent when your research focuses on socially-sensitive or politically-charged topics.

TIP: Don’t be afraid to ask (but be sure to come prepared)

Using research tools that help you recruit and collect data from participants is a given. But, these tools won’t help if you’re afraid or unprepared to ask for help. 

Prepare a good argument for why people should participate in your research. Learn to sell your story and come up with potential incentives if needed. Finally, have all your forms and information ready if people ask for it.

Then, reach out to your network (or list of potential participants). The worst that can happen is that some will say “No.” And, when they do, don’t let that stop you. Get back up, dust yourself off, and try again. Perseverance is key.

7. Staying self-motivated and managing your time

When you’re managing a research project, it can seem like there’s never enough hours in the day. There’s an ongoing battle between considering all perspectives to keep your research balanced and taking a deep enough dive to make sure your research has an impact. It’s likely that you’ll have commitments outside of your research project as well. So, you’ll be fighting to maintain a good balance between other work, administrative, and personal tasks.

As your research project drags on, you may also start hitting a motivational wall. When you’re the person in charge of maintaining deadlines, the temptation to procrastinate on tasks you don’t enjoy can throw timelines off track.

TIP: Plan and put accountability systems in place

There’s plenty of advice out there to help you with motivation. In particular, if you take the proper care when planning your research project , you’ll be setting yourself up for success. Choosing a topic that is interesting and engaging is key in helping you fight motivational burnout later in the process.

If your topic is engaging but you’re still struggling with time management, try some of these tips:

• Map your project in a visual calendar: If you haven’t already done this, sit down and input deadlines/tasks into a digital or physical calendar to help you break down your research project into more manageable chunks. It lifts some of the mental burden of remembering tasks and gives you a handy tool to see if you’re on track.
• Set up a reward system: Whether it’s going out for a nice meal, binging your favorite TV show, or going on a fun day trip, think of rewards that are meaningful to you and tie them to specific project milestones. Follow through and give yourself those well-deserved breaks when you accomplish the associated milestones.
• Find accountability buddies: Share your research goals with someone you trust and ask them to follow up with you. Knowing that someone other than yourself expects an update every few weeks can be extremely motivating.

8. Ensuring your research doesn’t sit and collect dust

Unfortunately, there are times when research that took a long time and a lot of effort is never used. Sometimes, this is because the expectations of the researcher and the funders didn’t line up. But more often, it’s because of a lack of effective effort to communicate the research results to stakeholders who can leverage it.

In the context of knowledge management, there is also a large body of partially completed research and data sets that are effectively “lost” to the larger community. When you’re incentivized to move on to your next research project quickly, you might deprioritize tasks like making your old research and unused data sets easily accessible to those who are looking for it (including your future self).

Even fully completed research is facing a knowledge management crisis. As mentioned in this study on researcher challenges by ExLibris: 

“Advances in technology have changed the demands for transparency in sharing research… Most scholars (almost 60%) are now obligated to make their raw research datasets openly available with their published work. However, over a quarter of them (26%) find it difficult to do so in the context of current research data management solutions.”

TIP: Wrap up your research with the future in mind

When the end is in sight and you’re excited to move onto a new research topic, think about the impact that you want your research to have. If you don’t take the time to communicate your findings effectively or make your insights easily available, all the hard work you did could end up having a minimal real-world effect. 

On a similar note, knowledge management benefits your future self. All of those notes and data that you didn’t publish? Where and how will you store them in case you want to access them later? Organize this information while it’s still fresh in your mind. Otherwise, you could find yourself staring at notes years later that seem like they were written in a foreign language. Even worse: bad organization could prevent you from even finding your old notes/data at all.

Research challenges: Expecting the unexpected

Being a researcher is full of unpredictable challenges. Careful preparation and planning can help with some of the common ones that come up. But, there will always be issues that catch you completely off guard. 

While it would be great to be able to “expect the unexpected,” the most effective strategy for managing challenges is to simply keep an open mind. Recognize early on that your research is never going to go exactly the way you anticipate (and embrace that as part of the fun of being a researcher).

Maintain a curious enthusiasm about your research question and your research process. It will help you think outside of the box when unexpected challenges inevitably arise.

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11 common challenges you face as a researcher

As much as I love being a researcher, we experience some challenges when we try to lead research. Below I will share some of the common pain points other researchers, and I have faced within our roles.

.css-1nrevy2{position:relative;display:inline-block;} What are the problems faced by researchers during research?

1. research is slow and expensive.

As research as a separate team is relatively new compared to engineering, product, or design, many stakeholders may not have worked with researchers in the past and understand the value that a researcher can bring to the table.

Additionally, because some research methodologies take time to execute or require external vendor support to get the best insight, there are perceptions that research is slow or expensive and will be a barrier or blocker in building or shipping products.

These can lead to research not being included in product conversations early, or at all, limiting the ability for analysis to provide strategic or directional support.

In other cases it may lead to research not getting the right budget to effectively perform their work, leading to researchers having to be scrappy, hacky and de-prioritize research that may take up a significant percentage of their budget.

2. Research teams of one, or silos

When research is not valued, organizations will not invest in a group. Many organizations will have an individual researcher across the entire company or multiple product areas, which can strain the researcher to rigorously prioritize what projects they work on and lead to frustrations with other teams if they are not getting research support.

In cases where research teams exist, researchers may be embedded in discrete or separate product areas, making it hard for researchers to collaborate or pair with other researchers on projects. When researchers come together to attend crit or share feedback and experiences, researchers spend time setting the context of what they're working on with peers (especially in non-consumer facing experiences) to ensure peers can provide meaningful feedback to support their projects.

3. Research execution

Sometimes, after a researcher has spent the time and effort creating a robust research report, it isn't used. A research report is usually not used because of a mismatch in expectations of the stakeholder and researcher. Researchers need to ensure that stakeholders are taken along the research creation journey to ensure there is alignment and buy-in from stakeholders.

In some cases, researchers may "throw research over the fence" in that they may not invest the effort in creating research outputs that resonate with stakeholders or take the time to have conversations and presentations with stakeholders to open a dialogue about the research and help the stakeholder understand how to leverage the research

4. Research not used

In other cases, product priorities may have shifted, or new dependencies now prevent the research findings from being integrated into products and design. Inaction on research can make it harder for researchers to feel like they impact their team when their work doesn't create change in the product.

Researchers must determine other ways to generate value from the work that they have done. Value might be in the form of looking for broader opportunities to share findings outside of the direct stakeholder team or share with their research team, where outputs have the chance to be used for related work.

5. Too much effort to add and search for previous work

Researchers can spend a lot of time looking for past research or data to support a stakeholder or research project. Because researchers have to quickly jump from one project to another to ensure they can continually provide value, 'meta work' such as knowledge management is usually deprioritized in the research process.

Researchers may actively try to stay up to date with knowledge management activities. As each researcher may have a different mental model for how to tag and store insights, other researchers can find it difficult to find research unless they know the right search keywords.

Whatever the format a researcher presents in (such as a presentation or report), it will be the same format that it is stored. An inconsistent storage format can be hard for future researchers to parse for insights, leading researchers to have to go through every individual report on a topic to determine if there are relevant insights.

6. Service model requests

Although stakeholders are critical to ensuring the value of research is understood, some stakeholders may come to a researcher with an explicit research request (e.g. "I want to do usability testing on this feature"). This experience puts researchers into a 'service model' and prevents researchers from providing real strategic value and looking for opportunities that may be blind spots from stakeholders.

Preventing service model situations from happening requires researchers to build strong proactive relationships with their stakeholders, so researchers are on the pulse of potential research opportunities and teach them how to come with questions, not solutions, to researcher conversations.

7. Institutional knowledge inhibits new research

As many stakeholders may have domain or institutional knowledge about the area that they are working in, they may make assumptions about customers or products, leading them to drive product decisions on their own experiences.

Although stakeholders might have daily interactions with customers, they are not customers. Their underlying biases and assumptions based on their experience may not always align with actual customer pain points and needs. Researchers must figure out ways to tactfully push back on these decisions to ensure that research can provide guidance, or analysis, to ensure customer needs are clearly understood.

8. Insight of one

If stakeholders are customer-facing, or are part of customer conversations, they are likely to receive feedback on the stakeholders' product or experience. Customers may also 'solutionize' (i.e. provide suggestions on fixing the product) during these conversations. If a customer is high value, stakeholders are more likely to reactively decide to change or re-prioritize work based on the customer's insight or product suggestion.

A robust stakeholder perspective may be challenging for researchers when they are looking to propose work that may be on a similar topic, as a stakeholder may be adamant that the insight they captured as part of the customer conversation covers the need to conduct additional research.

9. More time in operations means less time to research

The responsibility of all organization and operational activities are then put on the researcher, leaving them less time to focus on ensuring high-quality research throughout the process.

Having a dedicated research operations resource also enables them to focus on other ways to improve operations in planning, to run, and synthesizing research that can provide longer-term efficiency gains for researchers.

10. Recruiting participants is high effort

A large part of a research operations' role is managing the participant recruitment process. If a research panel with customers who have proactively opted to participate in research is not available (either internally or through a vendor), alternative sources have to be used to identify potential participants.

Email open rates  generally average 15-25% , so if there is a niche participant type, it's even more challenging to recruit enough of the relevant participants to match the required sample size.

There may also be situations where participant types are not digitally active (e.g. truck drivers), which means potential participants need to be called and manually scheduled individually.

Additionally, managing participants can take more effort: in most cases, confirmation calls are conducted with participants the day before a research session to minimize the potential of no-shows, and allows participants to reschedule.

11. Managing vendors through onboarding processes

Vendors support research in two key ways:

Recruitment & Logistics: Managing participants, including recruiting, scheduling, and incentive management. Vendors help when there is difficulty finding participant requirements, non-customers / users of a product or if the study is blinded. They may also rent out research labs for researchers to facilitate sessions if internal facilities are not available.

Research execution: Running full research projects, including planning, recruiting, execution, and synthesis. These are useful when there is a scoped project with little to no ambiguity (e.g. competitive review, usability testing).

In both cases, vendors need to go through procurement to agree on the work, cost, and expected outputs.

There are usually questionnaires related to security, privacy, and operational structures for larger or enterprise organizations that one or more internal teams may manage. In these cases, the researcher / research ops must become the middleman, working across both the internal teams and vendor to prevent timeline slippage of projects.

Procurement can become more complicated if organizations have stringent privacy or data protection processes, as there are strict requirements on what data sharing with external parties (e.g., personally identifiable information or PII off-limits).

If there is data that the researcher needs to recruit with and they are denied access because of company policy, it can lead to the researcher and vendor having to determine workarounds that may risk the quality of participants or research output.

Keep reading

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Office of Undergraduate Research

Overcoming research challenges, by shreya murthy, peer research ambassador.

Its 11pm at night and you have to send some materials to your PI on your research project the next morning. All of a sudden, your computer screen goes blue, then black, then won’t turn on again; your computer just crashed with all of your research inside.

Participating in research is a really wonderful and engaging experience and helps students in so many personal and professional ways. However, when situations such as the above computer crash happen, things get a little more interesting.

Like with any endeavor, there are going to be successes and challenges. While your computer crashing may be a bit of an extreme research challenge, it can happen. However, the more likely issue may be erroneous data, or an experiment giving you results you did expect or not being able to find the right resource in the library. Each person’s research is different and thus necessitates a unique response. However, having the right attitude and mentality when dealing with these issues will always help the situation.

Recognize that these issues do happen and that it is a normal part of the research process. By accepting this as truth you can transition from a place of panic or anxiety over the issue to a place of problem solving. Try to figure out what caused the problem, try to understand how to prevent the problem from happening again, or try to understand what the issue is trying to tell you. Use this information to make adjustments.

Be flexible! This is probably one of the most important things about research. You have to be able to roll with whatever your project throws at you. Depending on how long it takes you to figure out the issue, you may realize that you have to amend your timeline for the project. Maybe your data collection and database creation will now take 2 months instead of 1. Maybe you need to spend more time working on your experiment and less time on something else.

Remember why you started researching this topic in the first place . This is absolutely crucial. When talking to students who are interested in getting involved in research one of the things that we highlight is the need to be very passionate and interested in the topic that you choose to study. This is one of the reasons why. When things get tough, your underlying passion and motivation to answer your research question is going to be the thing that gets you through the tough times. It is going to be the thing that pushes you to go back into your lab or spend time working out your computer problem.

Undergraduate research is really fun to conduct but it does present challenges and will test your resolve as a student and researcher. Having the right attitude and mindset will really help you out when your computer decides to mess with you or an experiment gives you some weird data.

Shreya is a senior majoring in Criminology, Human Rights, and Finance, with a minor in Political Science. Click here to learn more about Shreya.

Three big research challenges (and how to overcome them)

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Building on our work with researchers across scores of industries we’ve pinpointed three key challenges that – like the proverbial bad penny – come up again and again.

• Firstly there’s the headache of harmonizing disjointed data sets across multiple regions and/or audiences. 
• Then there’s the challenge of managing your time, your team’s time, and your access to resources.
• Finally there’s the unwelcome phenomenon of imposter syndrome, whereby highly able practitioners start questioning their professional legitimacy for no apparent reason.

If any (or all) of the challenges we outline here sound familiar, believe us, we understand.

We’re more than familiar with the challenges researchers face. 

In this article we look at each issue in more depth and offer a few ideas to help you fight back.

1. The disjointed data set challenge

High-quality data is one of the most valuable commodities in a researcher’s toolkit .

In contrast, dodgy data sets drain researcher resources and limit effectiveness. This we all know.

Unfortunately working with data from legacy systems with no single or unified customer view isn’t exactly unheard of.

That’s because the customer experience is increasingly complex due to the proliferation of devices and channels, and organizational conflicts can lead to siloed data and duplicate customer records across multiple databases.

The solution

The first step to overcoming the disjointed data set challenge is acknowledging that less-than-perfect data environments aren’t necessarily a showstopper. 

In many cases you can successfully leverage disjointed or incomplete data, supplementing it with third-party data or using large scale surveys to probabilistically link data sets. 

While our position is simple – single-sourced market research is the most effective way forward – it’s sometimes necessary to focus on finding imaginative ways to make things work, perhaps by widening your net to include other sources.

You’ve probably heard the old saying about how the bendy reed can survive storms that topple the mighty oak. Very poetic, but also very true. 

It’s important that researchers can flex in response to events, including deficiencies in their data sources.

This is often about reaction time and team attitudes.

If your researchers can respond to events quickly, effectively and with a glad heart then you’re in a great place; if they’re slow and resistant to change then less so. Similarly, being able to make sense of the noise associated with disjointed data positions researchers as the experts in the room, with the insights and understanding to act as trusted advisors to decision makers. Another example of flexibility in practice is making sure you can add new data sets to your core data to create a harmonious whole that expands to match your needs.

Our platform makes it incredibly easy to ingest new GWI data sets. That way your insights will always be relevant, whatever direction your business takes in the future.

2. The managing time and resources challenge

For busy research teams there are rarely enough hours in the day.

There’s a constant struggle between taking a broad enough approach (to make sure you’ve covered all the ground) and going deep enough (to make sure you’ve bottomed out the search for insights).

In practice this means that even with access to the right data sets, uncovering insights with the power to transform a strategy, campaign or business model can be a major challenge. 

There are several things you can do that together should help you triumph over this challenge. 

Firstly it’s essential to use the freshest possible data so tasks can be completed quickly and efficiently without being derailed by out-of-date stuff. 

Secondly it’s important to keep all your data in one, easily accessible location. 

Using a single data source with a single methodology means you don’t waste time trying to connect disparate data sets. 

Finally – and importantly – it pays to use powerful and intuitive tools, more of which in the next section.

The right tools can make a major difference when it comes to time and resources challenges.

We’ve redesigned our platform from the ground up to help researchers overcome this exact issue. The result saves time and maximizes efficiency (with a visual interface that’s miles away from the clunky systems of the past), supports the effortless ingestion of the latest data from GWI, and integrates everything in one easy-to-use location.

Our new platform’s introducing smarter search tools, the ability to “fave ‘n’ save” almost everything, and an intuitive resources app meaning you get to the stuff you actually want, in far less time. 

At the same time we’ve flattened the learning curve to such an extent that members of your team should be able to jump in and start generating results almost immediately, massively reducing any bottleneck around resources. 

(Keep an eye out for updates on the release of our brand new platform coming this summer.)

3. The imposter syndrome challenge

No one likes feeling on the back foot, least of all researchers whose work is supposed to inspire confidence and could underpin huge spending decisions. 

But when stakeholders almost inevitably know more than you about a particular topic it can be a challenge to avoid creeping feelings of self-doubt. According to the Harvard Business Review , imposter syndrome is “a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success.”

Imposters suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence.” Ouch.

No-one can know everything (even if they appear to), and that as a researcher you’re really a detective, not an encyclopedia. 

Your job is to know how to find stuff for your stakeholders, not to know it already.

That’s absurdly unrealistic. So – as far as possible – stop worrying and start reminding yourself of past successes.

All that good stuff in your past career? Remind yourself that you helped make it happen.

Facts are the key to overcoming feelings of inadequacy every time.

Within revenue-orientated teams, the ability of research leaders to demonstrate a genuine ROI from their work is a great way to overcome feelings of imposterism. Nothing says “credibility” like cold, hard cash. Although sometimes tricky, there are ways to measure research and insight ROI and your team’s impact on your business, perhaps the simplest and most effective is looking at straightforward commercial success. 

Using this approach, City Pantry – one of London’s leading office catering marketplace businesses – were recently able to demonstrate cost-per-lead figures 75% lower than other campaigns of a similar type thanks to uniquely positioned, insight-driven content. 

For teams where revenue earning is at one remove (say product development) other metrics make more sense, for example speed of decision-making.

The point is that collaboration between teams and clear communication of results and data make demonstrating research and insight ROI a practical proposition, with the confidence dividend that implies.

The big takeaways

Obviously there are no foolproof solutions to any of the challenges we’ve just outlined.

That said, the ideas we put forward above can undoubtedly reduce the difficulty that hard-pressed researchers face on the daily:

• Use a single-sourced, regularly updated data set 
• Seek out and use the latest tools 
• Believe in yourself and your track record

Perhaps the most important takeout is that very few problems in our world are truly intractable, and where there’s a will, switched-on research professionals can usually find a way.

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16 market research tools and resources to help you think like your consumers, 16 of the best marketing campaigns to know in 2024, what is the marketing mix and how can you use it, 3 examples of sustainable brands hitting the mark with us consumers, you’ve read our blog, now see our platform.

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What are the research challenges that Academic Researchers face, and how do they overcome them?

2021, Academia Letters

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In this article the authors discuss issues faced by early career researchers, including the dichotomy, which many research textbooks and journal articles create and perpetuate between qualitative and quantitative research methodology despite considerable literature to support the use of mixed methods. The authors review current research literature and discuss some of the language, which can prove confusing to the early career researcher and problematic for postgraduate supervisors and teachers of research. The authors argue that discussions of research methods in research texts and university courses should include mixed methods and should address the perceived dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research methodology.

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This research is formulated to look for problems faced by young researchers with limited resources for research in hand. Few and insufficient researches in research area are the cause of ineffective research which also shows the flaws in system. The faults in the system causing barriers for young researchers have been identified and some approximate ways and appropriate suggestions are recommended to resolve them. Moreover, the present paper highlights the problems faced by new researchers such as limited resources, lack of knowledge, no platform, inaccessible educational resources, etc. The study also discusses the lacking in infrastructure and facilities provided to scholars. This research also points out the causes for which most of the new scholars are discouraged when they have observed that their supervisors are not interested and non-serious in solving their problems in research and studies.

Report Nr.: …

Mary Henkel

Princy Jain

Augustine Akhidime

This paper aims at assisting budding researchers, particularly in the social and management sciences to have better approach to handling doable research projects. The paper provides a lucid and practical discussion on the importance and simple strategies involved in the identification and development of researchable problems; processes that are considered to be the cornerstone and precursor for a feasible and successful research effort. The paper relies on extant literature and basic teaching methodology in presenting in very simple form a narrative of the systematic building blocks of research problem development which begins with the explanation of the concept of research, research cycle, sources of research problem, statement of research problem, questions, objectives and hypotheses. The paper concludes that the importance of research problem lies in the fact that the entire research efforts begin with the articulation and formulation of researchable problem from the research top...

George Karagioules

Marta Martín , Begoña Espejo

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Chapter 5. Challenges in Improving Community Engagement in Research

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Jo Anne Grunbaum, EdD

Introduction

This chapter addresses common challenges faced in community-engaged research, whether that research meets the definition of community-based participatory research (CBPR) or falls elsewhere on the spectrum of community engagement efforts. These challenges and some approaches for meeting them are illustrated with a series of vignettes that describe real-life experiences of partnerships emanating from the Prevention Research Centers (PRC) program, the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, and other community-engaged research (CEnR) efforts.

CDC funds PRCs in schools of public health and medicine; the first three PRCs were funded in 1986. Currently, 37 PRCs are funded across 27 states, working as an interdependent network of community, academic, and public health partners to conduct applied prevention research and support the wide use of practices proven to promote good health. These partners design, test, and disseminate strategies that can be implemented as new policies or recommended public health practices. For more information on the PRC program, visit https://www.cdc.gov/prc .

The CTSA program began in 2006 with 12 sites funded by the National Center for Research Resources, a part of NIH. As of publication, the CTSA Consortium includes 55 medical research institutions located throughout the nation that work together to energize the discipline of clinical and translational science. The CTSA institutions share a common vision to improve human health by transforming the research and training environment in the U.S. to enhance the efficiency and quality of clinical and translational research. Community engagement programs in the CTSAs help foster collaborative and interdisciplinary research partnerships, enhance public trust in clinical and translational research, and facilitate the recruitment and retention of research participants to learn more about health issues in the United States’ many diverse populations. For more information on the CTSA Consortium, visit https://ctsa.ncats.nih.gov/ External .

• Engaging and maintaining community involvement.
• Overcoming differences between and among academics and the community.
• Working with nontraditional communities.
• Initiating a project with a community and developing a community advisory board.
• Overcoming competing priorities and institutional differences.

Each vignette describes a challenge faced by a partnership and the actions taken and provides pertinent take-home messages. The intention is to provide readers with snapshots of community engagement activity during the research process. Readers are encouraged to contact the authors or refer to the references for further information concerning findings and follow-up.

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5 Market Research Challenges (And How to Solve Them)

Tien-Anh Nguyen

December 31, 2013

Conducting buyer insights research can be overwhelming. From planning to the actual studies, there are a lot of responsibilities and hurdles to manage. Here are a few of the most common market research challenges that companies face, as well as some of the simplest solutions to get everyone up and running.

Few initiatives will provide your company with as many in-depth insights into your customers as effective buyer insights research. By asking your customers and prospective buyers the right questions you’ll further your understanding of:

• The distinct buying roles that exist in your buyer’s organization
• The different stages in the customer buying process
• The features that matter most to buyers’ business goals
• How your buyer views your product and your competitors’

While it provides a wealth of information, market research also comes with its share of challenges: generating support from stakeholders, difficulty contacting prospects, and unforgiving time constraints. Before you give up, we’d like to stress that the benefits of buyer insights certainly outweigh the challenges. Here are five of the most common market research challenges and the simply solutions to each.

The 5 Market Research Challenges (And Their Solutions)

Photo by : Michael Lokner 

Chief Business Officer at UserTesting

Tien Anh joined UserTesting in 2015 after extensive financial and strategic experiences at OpenView, where he was an investor and advisor to a global portfolio of fast-growing enterprise SaaS companies. Until 2021, he led the Finance, IT, and Business Intelligence team as CFO of UserTesting. He currently leads initiatives for long term growth investments as Chief Business Officer at UserTesting.

What’s in store for B2B marketing in 2024. Marketing expert Jon Miller shares his eight game changing predictions here.

ABM, or account-based marketing, is a powerful strategy to push relevant leads further down the funnel towards purchase. But for many companies, it’s often led by sales’ own criteria, rather than driven by powerful marketing data. Here’s how to do ABM the right way.

Ready to use paid advertising to grow your B2B startup’s customer base? Here’s an in depth guide to get you started.

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1.12: Challenges Conducting Developmental Research

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Learning Outcomes

• Describe challenges associated with conducting research in lifespan development

Challenges Associated with Conducting Developmental Research

The previous sections describe research tools to assess development across the lifespan, as well as the ways that research designs can be used to track age-related changes and development over time. Before you begin conducting developmental research, however, you must also be aware that testing individuals of certain ages (such as infants and children) or making comparisons across ages (such as children compared to teens) comes with its own unique set of challenges. In the final section of this module, let’s look at some of the main issues that are encountered when conducting developmental research, namely ethical concerns, recruitment issues, and participant attrition.

Ethical Concerns

As a student of the social sciences, you may already know that Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) must review and approve all research projects that are conducted at universities, hospitals, and other institutions (each broad discipline or field, such as psychology or social work, often has its own code of ethics that must also be followed, regardless of institutional affiliation). An IRB is typically a panel of experts who read and evaluate proposals for research. IRB members want to ensure that the proposed research will be carried out ethically and that the potential benefits of the research outweigh the risks and potential harm (psychological as well as physical harm) for participants.

What you may not know though, is that the IRB considers some groups of participants to be more vulnerable or at-risk than others. Whereas university students are generally not viewed as vulnerable or at-risk, infants and young children commonly fall into this category. What makes infants and young children more vulnerable during research than young adults? One reason infants and young children are perceived as being at increased risk is due to their limited cognitive capabilities, which makes them unable to state their willingness to participate in research or tell researchers when they would like to drop out of a study. For these reasons, infants and young children require special accommodations as they participate in the research process. Similar issues and accommodations would apply to adults who are deemed to be of limited cognitive capabilities.

When thinking about special accommodations in developmental research, consider the informed consent process. If you have ever participated in scientific research, you may know through your own experience that adults commonly sign an informed consent statement (a contract stating that they agree to participate in research) after learning about a study. As part of this process, participants are informed of the procedures to be used in the research, along with any expected risks or benefits. Infants and young children cannot verbally indicate their willingness to participate, much less understand the balance of potential risks and benefits. As such, researchers are oftentimes required to obtain written informed consent from the parent or legal guardian of the child participant, an adult who is almost always present as the study is conducted. In fact, children are not asked to indicate whether they would like to be involved in a study at all (a process known as assent) until they are approximately seven years old. Because infants and young children cannot easily indicate if they would like to discontinue their participation in a study, researchers must be sensitive to changes in the state of the participant (determining whether a child is too tired or upset to continue) as well as to parent desires (in some cases, parents might want to discontinue their involvement in the research). As in adult studies, researchers must always strive to protect the rights and well-being of the minor participants and their parents when conducting developmental research.

This video from the US Department of Health and Human Services provides an overview of the Institutional Review Board process.

A YouTube element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: http://pb.libretexts.org/lsdm/?p=70

You can view the transcript for “How IRBs Protect Human Research Participants” here (opens in new window) .

Recruitment

An additional challenge in developmental science is participant recruitment. Recruiting university students to participate in adult studies is typically easy. Many colleges and universities offer extra credit for participation in research and have locations such as bulletin boards and school newspapers where research can be advertised. Unfortunately, young children cannot be recruited by making announcements in Introduction to Psychology courses, by posting ads on campuses, or through online platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. Given these limitations, how do researchers go about finding infants and young children to be in their studies?

The answer to this question varies along multiple dimensions. Researchers must consider the number of participants they need and the financial resources available to them, among other things. Location may also be an important consideration. Researchers who need large numbers of infants and children may attempt to recruit them by obtaining infant birth records from the state, county, or province in which they reside. Some areas make this information publicly available for free, whereas birth records must be purchased in other areas (and in some locations birth records may be entirely unavailable as a recruitment tool). If birth records are available, researchers can use the obtained information to call families by phone or mail them letters describing possible research opportunities. All is not lost if this recruitment strategy is unavailable, however. Researchers can choose to pay a recruitment agency to contact and recruit families for them. Although these methods tend to be quick and effective, they can also be quite expensive. More economical recruitment options include posting advertisements and fliers in locations frequented by families, such as mommy-and-me classes, local malls, and preschools or daycare centers. Researchers can also utilize online social media outlets like Facebook, which allows users to post recruitment advertisements for a small fee. Of course, each of these different recruitment techniques requires IRB approval. And if children are recruited and/or tested in school settings, permission would need to be obtained ahead of time from teachers, schools, and school districts (as well as informed consent from parents or guardians).

And what about the recruitment of adults? While it is easy to recruit young college students to participate in research, some would argue that it is too easy and that college students are samples of convenience. They are not randomly selected from the wider population, and they may not represent all young adults in our society (this was particularly true in the past with certain cohorts, as college students tended to be mainly white males of high socioeconomic status). In fact, in the early research on aging, this type of convenience sample was compared with another type of convenience sample—young college students tended to be compared with residents of nursing homes! Fortunately, it didn’t take long for researchers to realize that older adults in nursing homes are not representative of the older population; they tend to be the oldest and sickest (physically and/or psychologically). Those initial studies probably painted an overly negative view of aging, as young adults in college were being compared to older adults who were not healthy, had not been in school nor taken tests in many decades, and probably did not graduate high school, let alone college. As we can see, recruitment and random sampling can be significant issues in research with adults, as well as infants and children. For instance, how and where would you recruit middle-aged adults to participate in your research?

Another important consideration when conducting research with infants and young children is attrition . Although attrition is quite common in longitudinal research in particular (see the previous section on longitudinal designs for an example of high attrition rates and selective attrition in lifespan developmental research), it is also problematic in developmental science more generally, as studies with infants and young children tend to have higher attrition rates than studies with adults. For example, high attrition rates in ERP (event-related potential, which is a technique to understand brain function) studies oftentimes result from the demands of the task: infants are required to sit still and have a tight, wet cap placed on their heads before watching still photographs on a computer screen in a dark, quiet room. In other cases, attrition may be due to motivation (or a lack thereof). Whereas adults may be motivated to participate in research in order to receive money or extra course credit, infants and young children are not as easily enticed. In addition, infants and young children are more likely to tire easily, become fussy, and lose interest in the study procedures than are adults. For these reasons, research studies should be designed to be as short as possible – it is likely better to break up a large study into multiple short sessions rather than cram all of the tasks into one long visit to the lab. Researchers should also allow time for breaks in their study protocols so that infants can rest or have snacks as needed. Happy, comfortable participants provide the best data.

Conclusions

Lifespan development is a fascinating field of study – but care must be taken to ensure that researchers use appropriate methods to examine human behavior, use the correct experimental design to answer their questions, and be aware of the special challenges that are part-and-parcel of developmental research. After reading this module, you should have a solid understanding of these various issues and be ready to think more critically about research questions that interest you. For example, what types of questions do you have about lifespan development? What types of research would you like to conduct? Many interesting questions remain to be examined by future generations of developmental scientists – maybe you will make one of the next big discoveries!

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/16510

[glossary-page] [glossary-term]attrition:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]reduction in the number of research participants as some drop out over time[/glossary-definition]

[glossary-term]informed consent:[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]a process of informing a research participant what to expect during a study, any risks involved, and the implications of the research, and then obtaining the person’s agreement to participate[/glossary-definition]

[glossary-term]Institutional Review Boards (IRBs):[/glossary-term] [glossary-definition]a panel of experts who review research proposals for any research to be conducted in association with the institution (for example, a university)[/glossary-definition] [/glossary-page]

Contributors and Attributions

• Volunteer Signs Informed Consent Form. Authored by : NIAID. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/niaid/45116548901 . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Research Methods in Developmental Psychology. Authored by : Angela Lukowski and Helen Milojevich. Provided by : University of Calfornia, Irvine. Located at : https://nobaproject.com/modules/research-methods-in-developmental-psychology?r=LDcyNTg0 . Project : The Noba Project. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Institutional Review Boards. Provided by : U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=196&v=U8fme1boEbE . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License