Research Projects

Risk and Uncertainty in R&D Financial Analysis

Risk and uncertainty are not synonyms in financial analysis - the distinction, the machinery each one calls for, and what happens when the wrong one is assumed.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 8 min read

Risk Scoring with RFMEA: A Worked Analytical Method

Risk score, detection factor and risk priority number, Pareto ranking and the four-quadrant scatter - a complete applied technique, including why its thresholds are chosen rathe…

Running a Focus Group: A Worked Example

The method named in a learning objective and taught nowhere in fourteen weeks - here run properly by an examined thesis, including a first sitting abandoned at two attendees.

Sample Size in Quantitative Studies

The only concrete sample-size guidance in the entire dataset, why a descriptive study needs so many more subjects than an experiment - and why these figures are not yours to reuse.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 18 min read

Sampling and Selecting Participants

The who of data gathering - how the source frames participant selection, what it says about sample choice, and the sampling theory it never supplies.

Sampling Methods: The Six Named Types

Purposive, random, simple random, stratified, systematic and cluster sampling as the source defines them - including the three places its own definitions do not hold together.

Scheduling a Research Project

What the worked schedule and the subject's own advice together imply about building one - gates first, durations before dates, and the dependency that ends more projects than an…

Scientific Research: Five Defining Characteristics

Rules of science, logic, systematic analysis of evidence, replicability and cumulative knowledge — what each characteristic demands of a project management study.

Scope and Delimitation

Limiting scope is the most critical step and time is the biggest constraint - what to include, what to exclude, and the three questions that set the boundary.

Seeking and Using Feedback

Six levels at which feedback can be sought, why corrective feedback early is normal rather than damning, and who else can read your work before your supervisor does.

Selecting a Research Method: The Selection Questions

The question set the source offers for choosing between methods - each one turned into a decision you can actually make, with the ethics question that has no framework behind it…

Selecting R&D Projects: An Informational View

Treating R&D as the purchase of information rather than the purchase of an outcome - what a project actually is under that view, and why aggregate R&D spend is a misleading meas…

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 20 min read

Seventeen Worked Research Designs in Project Management

Every research design in a published volume of master's project management research, summarised as question, methodology and data collection — and the pattern across all seven…

Six Approaches to Collecting Qualitative Data

The six approaches the source sets out with what each yields, what each costs and where each fails - the fullest data collection treatment in the whole teaching source.

Social Science Research: Why People Are Harder to Study

Unpredictability, a changing social world and participant awareness — the five characteristics that make social science research different, and what they cost a project research…

Sources of Uncertainty in R&D Projects

Four distinct sources of uncertainty, why treating them as one number destroys the information, and which of them a project team can actually reduce.

Sponsors and Researcher Independence

What a sponsor is entitled to, what they are not, and how to keep an objective assessment of the data when the sponsor is also your employer.

State Aid Assessment of Large R&D Projects

A two-layer assessment, notification triggers, the incentive-effect test and the impact-on-competition test - how a competition authority actually assessed large R&D funding.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 18 min read

Stating Limitations and Contribution

Every examined work states its limitations, in four different places and at four different lengths - and how contribution claims can quietly contradict the limitations a page ea…

Step 1: Generating and Refining a Research Idea

Why topic selection is the hardest part, the three sources of ideas the source names, and the eight screening questions to run before you commit.

Step 2: Reviewing and Testing Your Research Topic

The five fundamental questions and five personal questions to answer before you settle, plus the brainstorm-cluster-title sequence for narrowing what is left.

Step 3: Checking the Literature

Source and scan, download and save, read and annotate, write daily, date every draft, back up off-site — the six-part literature routine and what it is building towards.

Step 4: Deciding Your Research Question

Nine questions to interrogate before you write the question down, the one-sentence rule, and why methods make no sense until the question is settled.

Step 5: Designing Your Research

Choosing methods that answer your question, the half-research half-writing time rule, and three worked question-to-method examples from the source.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 7 min read

Step 6: Seeking Ethics Clearance

The three screening questions the supplied source gives, why clearance comes before data collection — and a clear statement of how much of ethics this source does not cover.

Steps 7-8: Conducting the Research and Theorising the Data

The action stage where project management skill matters most, and the analytical stage where data is tested against the theory in your literature review to produce new knowledge.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 17 min read

Steps 9-10: Writing the Report and Storing the Data

The five-part write-up sequence the source sets out, why you cannot write before you have concluded, and the data storage obligation it names but does not specify.

Strengths and Limitations of Qualitative Research

What the approach is genuinely good at, what it cannot do, and how to state both in a methodology chapter without either overclaiming or apologising.

Structured and Unstructured Questions

Fixed responses against open ones - what each type can capture, what each costs at the analysis stage, and how the choice is really a decision about your analysis plan.

Structuring a Literature Review

Introduction, body and conclusion - the full component list for each, including the nine things the body should cover and the two the conclusion must resolve.

Structuring a Research Report

The report components and the format conventions the source states - section, paragraph and page numbering - with an honest account of where the supplied slides are truncated.

Survey Design Across Four Examined Theses

Instrument length, response formats, recruitment, achieved numbers and reported rates - four surveys compared, including one whose stated response rate is not the survey's own.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 19 min read

Survey Design and Response Rates in Practice

Real instrument decisions from examined research: scale choice, the zero point, screening questions, and what happened to the response rate - with every figure marked study-spec…

Survey Research and Survey Construction

What survey research is for, how a survey is constructed, and the construction decisions the source names - with the sampling and analysis stages it does not reach.

Ten Questions to Ask of Your Data

The ten interrogations the source sets out as a diagram - grouping, patterns, counts, matrices, deviations, chains of evidence and the stories that emerge - with no stated order.

Terms Used in Qualitative Data Analysis

Interim analysis, the cyclical collection and analysis of data during a study, and the rest of the week's vocabulary table - with the terms it uses and never defines marked.

The Action Research Thesis Structure

When the chapter architecture is the research cycle itself: four learning phases as four chapters, a repeated case-study template, and findings reported twice for two audiences.

The Anatomy of an Abstract: A Worked Example

Five sentences and four moves - need, what was done, results, significance - annotated on a real published abstract, and the one element it leaves out that its own week requires.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 8 min read

The Annotated Bibliography

What an annotated bibliography is, the five things it provides, when it is the right deliverable, and how a real submitted example reads against the standard.

The Challenge of Writing Up

First draft, re-writing and editing, polishing - the three stages, why the first draft is a milestone rather than an achievement, and the two contradictory claims the week makes…

The Complete Objective Audit

Nineteen learning objectives across eight audited weeks, two of them fully delivered - the final reconciled audit, and the pattern that explains the other seventeen.

The Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

Concepts as the building blocks of theory, how the theoretical framework emerges from the conceptual framework, and the seven things the framework does for your project.

The Context of Data Gathering

Where data is collected changes what the data means - the contextual factors the source names, and the design consequences it leaves for the reader to work out.

The Data Collection and Analysis Sequence

How information will be collected and analysed - the steps in data collection, the method-selection questions attached to them, and the point where the sequence stops.

The Delphi Method in Practice

A hybrid Delphi with sixteen respondents, twenty items and its complete raw dataset printed - which is why every mean can be recomputed and three modes cannot.

Research Projects16 Aug 2026 · 11 min read

The Discussion Guidelines

Primary analyses first, statistical significance, weaknesses and strengths, generalisability - the ordered guidelines the source gives, including the one that contradicts its ow…

The Do's and Don'ts of Social Research

Forty-four checklist items from a published toolkit, grouped and read critically - including the pairs that say the same thing twice and the two that correct a belief rather tha…