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Conducting Research Seminar Workbook

6 Seminar Five

In the lecture this week you will have learnt about project management. In this session you will apply these project management techniques to your research project.

6.1 Task 1

If you havent already, decide as a group on the following things:

  • What is the intervention and how will the intervention be administered?
  • What outcomes will be measured to determine effectiveness?
  • What control/comparator will you use (no intervention, placebo, alternative treatment, alternative doses etc)?
  • Will you use randomisation (simple or block)?
  • Will you use blinding (participant, researchers, statistician)?
  • What is the trial design (single group pre-test post-test, two arm parallel arm, two arm crossover, multi-arm parallel arm etc)?

6.2 Task 2

Continue to draft your trial protocol (see task 4, seminar 4) as a group. Try to make this as detail as possible. This will enable your tutor to evaluate it and consider the ethical implications of your proposal. It will also act as a useful standard operating procedure for you and your group when it comes to undertaking/conducting the trial.

Here is a useful example of a published trial protocol: Aerobic endurance training versus relaxation training in patients with migraine

6.3 Task 3

For the purposes of this module your protocol will also act as your project definition document. However, many research projects will have these as seperate entities.

Now that you have a reasonable idea of your study design you can now produce a work breakdown structure. The work breakdown structure allows you break the main trial processes down into smaller manageable tasks; each of these tasks can often be broken down further into sub tasks.

Using draw.io, produce a work breakdown structure for your project. Consider the following categories:

  1. The project
  2. Sub projects
  3. Milestones
  4. Major activities
  5. Work packages

6.4 Task 4

Now you have a sense of the individual work packages you can devise a network diagram and/or gantt chart.

Select one of the following and create your own network diagram/gantt chart for your project.

6.5 Task 5

Finally, for each work package/task allocate it to a member of your group. This person will be responsible and accountable for conducting this part of the project.

The tasks should be evenly distributed across the group.