How to Conduct Your First Research Project

Your first research project is easiest when it is small, answerable with data you can access, and supervised by someone experienced. Plan for the whole path (question, protocol, ethics, data, analysis, report) before you start, because later steps constrain earlier ones.

Step-by-step

1. Choose a narrow question. One population, one exposure or intervention, one primary outcome. See How to Write a Research Question.
2. Check the literature. Confirm the question is not already answered, and note how others measured the outcome.
3. Pick the simplest design that fits. For many first projects this is a retrospective chart review, a cross-sectional survey, a case report or a small evidence review. See How to Select the Right Study Design.
4. Write a short protocol. Include eligibility criteria, variables, outcome definitions, data sources, analysis plan and who does what.
5. Resolve ethics. Ask your institution's ethics board whether your project needs approval, is exempt, or is quality improvement. Do not decide this yourself.
6. Build a data collection sheet with defined variables and no unnecessary identifiers.
7. Collect data consistently; test the form on a few records first.
8. Clean and analyse following the plan. Involve a statistician early for anything beyond descriptive summaries.
9. Write and report using the matching reporting guideline (for example STROBE for observational studies).
10. Share through a conference abstract or manuscript, with authorship agreed beforehand.

Illustrative example

Invented for teaching. "Among adults admitted with community-acquired pneumonia in one hospital in 2024, what proportion received antibiotics within four hours, and was delay associated with length of stay?" Design: retrospective cross-sectional chart review. Primary outcome: proportion treated within four hours. Data: de-identified spreadsheet from medical records with ethics permission.

Common pitfalls

• Question too broad ("outcomes of diabetes").
• Collecting data before the protocol and ethics decision.
• Changing the outcome after seeing the data without saying so.
• Under-estimating the time for data cleaning and approvals.

Key takeaways

• Small, clear and supervised beats ambitious and vague.
• Write the plan first; follow it; report deviations.
• Ethics review decisions belong to the ethics board, not the researcher.

This page is general educational information about research methods. It is not medical, legal or regulatory advice; follow your institution's ethics board and your target journal's instructions.