Building a Program of Research

As a doctoral student or junior faculty member, you will be challenged to develop a program of research that can be sustained over a period of time and that captures your energy and enthusiasm.  The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of building a program of research, use the outcomes models to help think about building a program of research, link research methodologies with a planned program of research, and then to review steps to building a program of research.

 A program of research is defined as an area of high interest and passion to the person defining it.  You must be committed to the area so that your interest can be maintained over time.  A program of research addresses a significant public health issue that is relevant to the health and well-being of people.  A program of research is designed to build knowledge over time that can contribute to improved outcomes of health care.  A program of research is grounded theoretically and linked to rigorous research methodologies.

One strategy that can be used to help you think about developing a program of research is to use the Outcomes Model for Health Care Research (Holzemer, & Reilly, 1995; Holzemer, 2000).  The Outcomes Model is a heuristic or a way to think about your program of research.  Before we discuss how to use the Outcomes Model, it needs to be described.

 The Outcomes Model for Health Care Research builds upon earlier work by Donabedian in quality of care and has three horizontal dimensions, namely Inputs, Processes, and Outcomes (See Figure 1). This horizontal dimension represents time. The vertical dimensions includes three components at a basic level, including the client or patient, the provider or interventionist, and the setting in which the program of research may take place. 

We link the Outcomes model with research methodology by labeling the variables inputs, processes, and outcomes as the Z (covariates), X (independent variable), and Y (dependent variable) variables (See Figure 3).  The X, Y, Z notation is not too common, but does provide a short-hand way to talk about variables.  Many authors refer to dependent variables at Y variable because the outcome variables are usually plotted on the Y axis.  It is also common to refer to the independent variable as the X variable. Few have labeled covariates as Z variables.

With this notation, we can begin to think about both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.  Qualitative methods usually use text as the data input and broadly speaking are interpretative in nature.  One can use this notation in qualitative research but it is uncommon.  You might want to conduct a qualitative study on self-care activities and you ask the question, What is X?  What are the self-care strategies that people living with chronic diabetes use to manage their illness?  This might be a type of research that would lend itself well to qualitative methodology.