Guidance for researchers to move from a topic to research question to a research methodology.

What is it about?

Many family medicine and community health practitioners want like to do research, but the lack the skills or resources. By starting with a case or topic, the advice in this paper begins where most good research starts. The paper guides aspiring researchers to start with a topic, and then try six different feasible research approaches that could be used with that topic, mixed methods survey, semi-structured interviews, curriculum development, quality improvement, health policy analysis and case study research approaches. This process helps to refine research questions as well. Because people differ in their affinity for the processes of research, this article encourages a match of both the topic to the question as well as the matching of the researcher to the method. This paper provides an applied approach that will catalyze your topic.

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Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Many programs and emerging researchers have few resources for conducting research in family medicine/primary care, and need concise guidance on how to go from topics to projects. Once choosing a topic, they need further guidance on how to use methodology. This paper is part of a special issue designed to help emerging researchers around the world advance experience in primary care research.

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