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<b><h4>Do you use research plans or protocols in your field of study?</h4></b>

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<b>Mary Henderson, PhD Researcher, University of Roehampton</b>

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I have to use research plans and protocols as part of my study, and you know, not just because I feel that I have to do it, but I benefit a lot from using them. So being a PhD candidate, I start out with a first draft of a research plan, and I constantly go through and review and improve upon it. And it's trying to strike a balance between enough detail, but enough leeway because it is supposed to be exploratory. 

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And you come up against certain dead ends, you'll have to test and try things out. But if you haven't planned well enough at the beginning, you know there's only so much time that you can waste, and dead ends that you can go down. So you try to plan as best as you can, consulting the correct guidelines and resources and an expertise within the university.
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<b><h4>Have your thoughts about the importance of research plans changed over time?</h4></b>

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<b>Mary Henderson:</b> In terms of the importance, research plans have always been important. And I guess that probably comes from a past work history. So the only thing that has changed, I guess, is realising that the learning is in the process, so the drafting, improving, the trial and error, learning what worked, learning how the best go-to sources to help guide you in developing that research plan, has improved over time. And so, I guess just never forgetting the importance of reviewing, and trying to improve your research plan, and that it's an ongoing process. 
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<b><h4>Can you provide an example of how having a plan helped you avoid or deal with a potential research problem?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Arturo Hernandez-Colina, PhD Researcher, University of Liverpool</b>

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At the beginning of our research, we had a plan of what we will do and what we could expect, because we did some sampling of mosquitoes in a zoological garden. So our original plan was to capture a certain amount of mosquitoes, but that was a particularly good year for mosquitoes and we got almost three times the number of samples. So we had to adapt our plans a little bit. 

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And because of that, we had to change our ways of analysing the data in the lab, and we had to develop an extra plan for dealing with that situation. And because we had a very clear idea of our ultimate goal in this project, we we're able to process the samples in time and in an efficient way, and keep also at the same the samples for further analysis. So it was very good that we had this plan in advance, and that we could adapt it, when it was needed. 