What Will Research Do For My Organisation?

When most people think of research, they think of the process of finding out more about a particular topic or discovering an answer to a question. In this sense, most people do research every day, whether it is to learn about the latest world news, fashion or music trends, or whether it's worth booking a particular hotel for a weekend break. Research is not uncommon in our lives.

The difference though between good and bad research is in its quality and its credibility. In order to find out information, we need to decide what sources are worth looking at, and what value to place upon the information we get from those sources. That is the difficult part. Information is not hard to come by in today's 'information age' - in many ways, there is far too much information available to us and we can easily become overwhelmed by it.

The skill in research then is to be able to quickly identify what questions need answering and how best to answer them. If you wanted to take a loved one out for a special birthday meal then there are lots of relevant questions that need answering before you decide where to take them: what kind of food do they like / dislike? How far are you and they willing to travel? How can you get there? How much are you willing to spend? What days and times work best? What restaurants are available and open?

For example, there's no point looking at local fish restaurants if they hate fish and seafood! But if you know they love spicy food then that helps narrow down the field. You might decide you want to find a restaurant that is within 10 miles with a good reputation for quality and value for money.

After working out what information you need to find, you can put it into a research question: 'what restaurants within 10 miles serve spicy foods that are highly rated for quality and value and are open at 6pm next Tuesday evening?'.

Now you have a research question, you have to work out an appropriate way of finding out the answer. Certain websites and apps will give you crowd-sourced recommendations but you can also ask friends and colleagues. There are several ways of working out which restaurant to choose, you just have to work out which source is likely to give you the most trustworthy information that can help you make a decision.

So research is something that we are familiar with, even if we don't think of ourselves doing research in our day-to-day lives. What we, at Sports Research Consultants, can do is to help you work out what questions need asking to solve your particular issue or problem, and then work out how best to answer them. We have the skills to be able to source and evaluate information for you, whether that is through secondary sources such as documents, papers and notes, or through primary sources by speaking directly to people. Contact us to help you meet your research needs.