Research Lifecycle Directory: Research Planning
Research Planning
This page intends to provide users with several resources concerning research foundations, guiding researchers through formulating research questions, searching health sciences databases, tools for collaborative research, and grant applications. For additional information regarding evidence-based practice and health sciences research, visit our Guide to Evidence-Based Practice.
Tips and tricks for using the Learning Resource Centre's catalogue for Michener students, faculty, and researchers can be found in our LRC/Library Research Skills guide.
The Basics: Types of Research and Formulating Research Questions
Research Basics
- Health Sciences Research: Information Research Process - Queen's University LibraryExamines the research process basics and offers further resources focusing on specific kinds of research such as qualitative, and systematic or scoping reviews.
- Before You Start Your Research - University Health Network Virtual LibraryThis comprehensive guide takes you through the beginning stages of the research process and offers additional resources to aid in research development.
- Guide to Evidence-Based Practice: Forming Questions - Michener Institute for Education at UHN Learning Resource CentreThis page offers an effective how-to guide for formulating research questions. The guide provides a helpful table to help researchers design their questions using the PICO(T) method.
- Health Science Research Basics - McGill University LibraryDesigned as a starting point or refresher for Health Sciences researchers, this guide focuses on tips and tricks for conducting research. You can test yourself at the end with their informal research quiz!
Types of Research
- Getting Started: Literature Reviews - University of British Columbia LibraryThis page discusses the different types of literature reviews and offers descriptions of each and what their strengths are. This provides researchers with a deeper understanding of what type would be best suited to their research question.
- What is a Literature Review? - University Health Network Virtual LibraryExamines the types of literature reviews that are frequently conducted by researchers and contains an embedded tool that looks at each example individually.
- Systematic Reviews, Scoping Reviews, and other Knowledge Syntheses - McGill University LibraryThis guide focuses on the process of conducting knowledge synthesis projects and offers additional resources to further aid research development.
Grant Applications
Funding Resources
- Understand the Research Funding Life Cycle - Research & Innovation, University of TorontoA description of the funding life cycle that gives researchers a fuller understanding of the entire process.
- Grant Resources - University Health Network Virtual LibraryA list of resources for grant funding opportunities in Canada that apply to research in health sciences.
- Health Sciences Research: Funding & Grant Proposals - Queen's University LibraryThis guide provides further resources for researchers regarding writing grant applications for funding research projects. This includes links to additional resources as well as a list of helpful book titles with tips and tricks for writing successful applications.
- Grant Writing Guides - Unity HealthGrant writing guides that cover the topics of application administration, the art of writing a grant application, grant writing workshops, grant and awards guide, and writing your application from Unity Health.
Collaboration Tools
Thinking of Collaborating?
- Research Building Blocks: Collaboration - University Health Network Virtual LibraryA list of resources to aid researchers in identifying potential collaborators. Includes links to academic and professional networking sites as well as journal articles that examine the benefits of collaborative research.
Designing Search Strategies and Database Searching
Search Strategies 
- Systematic & Scoping Reviews: Methodology Behind the Search Strategies - University of Toronto LibrariesThis guide focuses on the methodologies behind search strategies for systematic and scoping reviews. It discusses what they are, how they are different, and examines search strategies designed to help you when conducting your research.
- Searching the Literature: A Guide to Comprehensive Searching in the Health Sciences - University of Toronto LibrariesThis guide offers a focused examination of searching health sciences databases and includes instructional videos to aid in database searching.
- Searching the Literature: The Basics - McMaster Health Sciences LibraryProvides an overview of literature searches and contains tips and tricks to evaluating your searches and how to improve them.
- What is Grey Literature? Finding Grey Literature - McMaster Health Sciences LibraryThis guide focuses on the subject of grey literature and includes a module that thoroughly examines the differences of grey literature and tips on how to search. The guide also offers additional resources including a list of grey literature publishers.
Database Searching 
Searching in PubMed
- PubMed Basics - U.S. National Library of MedicineThis resource is an informative PDF that provides an in-depth examination of the PubMed database which focuses on biomedical research and contains over 30 million citations from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books. The PDF outlines how to search PubMed and points to additional resources to help with searching the database.
- PubMed - McMaster Health Sciences LibraryProvides a set of tutorials related to the PubMed database and walks users through various tips and tricks to build better search queries.
- PubMed using MeSH - The Michener Institute for Education at UHNThis is a link to an in-house video tutorial that guides researchers in how-to use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to search the PubMed database and provides an understanding of controlled vocabulary in databases and how to maximize search strategies.
Searching in CINAHL
- CINAHL - McMaster Health Sciences LibraryA comprehensive overview of how to use the CINAHL database. The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) database focuses on research in nursing, biomedicine, alternative medicine, health sciences librarianship, and consumer health. Includes video tutorials and a glossary of terms.
Other Databases
- Searching the Cochrane Library - The Michener Institute for Education at UHNThe Cochrane Library database provides a collection of systematic reviews that examine the effects of prevention, treatment and rehabilitation in healthcare settings, supporting evidence-based practices in the health sciences. This resource is a video tutorial aimed to help researchers in searching the Cochrane Library database.
- Google Scholar - McMaster Health Sciences LibraryAn examination of Google Scholar - a key resource for searching for grey literature - that touches on the pros and cons of its use for research purposes.
Additional Resources
Workshops
- Workshop Description - University Health Network Virtual Library**For UHN Researchers Only**
Provides a list of workshops and workshop descriptions available through UHN Library & Information Services. Topics include PubMed searching, searching in CINAHL, how to choose the right 'type' of review, and an overview of systematic reviews.
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Michener Institute of Education at UHN, 2018.