Course Description:

The onerous mandate of science is to create a prosperous society. Anything outside of this will amount to a distraction. Every piece of research must impact the society in a positive way. However, quality is a non-negotiable pre-requisite for impact: impactful research must first be of high quality. But what is research quality? What are the ingredients that make high-quality research? How does one go about designing and executing quality research? How does one recognize quality research? How does one move from a quality to impactful research? How can research quality and impact be measured? These and many other questions researchers struggle with.

Often, research quality and impact are not the primary focus of the typical researcher; rather focus is on productivity, a term inadvertently presumed as the number of research items a scientist produces at a given time. However, this definition is misplaced and has negatively impacted research quality and impact across the world. The drive to count the number of research items produced by a scientist has compromised research quality and impact. In many cases this has been the primary cause of the increase in fraud and various misconducts seen in the scientific community in recent times. Compromising quality through a drive for productivity will produce research that may negatively impact on the society.

There is therefore an urgent need to continue to teach and guide researchers to appreciate and undertake high quality research, which will in turn have the desired impact on the society. On the other hand, providing a template for pursuing positive productivity in research will ensure that researchers make maximum impact and at the same time achieve personal satisfaction. For many African scientists, issues of quality, impact and productivity are often misconstrued or at most not discussed.

Why take this course?

This course will:

• Help you build a solid culture of pursuing quality and impact in any piece of research you undertake
• Teach you how to think quality and impact at each phase of the research process - from question formulation to journal publishing
• Guide and provide you, in a hands-on approach, with the tools to implement quality at each phase of the research process. 
• Unmask the meaning of quality, impact and productivity and how they are related in the research process
• Guide you on how to achieve quality, impact and productivity and at the same time maintain your research integrity 
• Help you to produce a high quality and impactful piece of research during the course as a demonstration of the skills learned from the course

Target Groups:

Anyone interested in research, regardless of their previous research experience  

Application period: 1st January – 5th April 2024

Course Days and Time:

Saturdays from 13th April to 15th June 2024 @ 5-7 pm GMT 

Brief content:

• Week 1: Introductions and contexts
• Week 2: Consequences of poor quality and non-impact research
• Week 3: Thinking quality and impact in the research
• Week 4: Quality and impact in study implementation
• Week 5: Quality in data collection
• Week 6: Quality in data analysis part 1: Pre-data analysis considerations
• Week 7: Quality in data analysis part 2: Performing the analysis
• Week 8: Quality in data analysis part 3: Interpreting the results
• Week 9: Quality in writing up research findings
• Week 10: Quality in publishing + Group presentation