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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>Professor Janet Boddy, Professor of Child, Youth & Family Studies, University of Sussex</b>

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I always use research plans and protocols in my research, and really, I think in two ways. One is that I'll always have a research proposal, and will try and make the proposal as detailed as possible, as the plan for the study. And the other is the ethics application. So we can't do a research project without having research ethics approval, and the application that you make for research ethics approval, I always think is a really good opportunity to plan in great detail, exactly what's going to be involved in doing the research. When you go out to interview people, what will you say to them? What will you ask them about? How will you explain what you're doing? What will you do with that information afterwards? So the ethics application gets really into the kind of nitty gritty of the everyday practice of the research, I suppose you could say. 
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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>Professor Janet Boddy:</b> I think I put increasing emphasis on its importance now. And that's really, I think, for two reasons. And one is that as I've moved through my career, I'm more and more often involved in reviewing, and sitting on funding panels for research councils, and so on. And again and again, you see that proposals where there might be a brilliant idea are competing against other proposals, which have brilliant ideas, but which are better specified, in more detail of the justification, more detail of exactly what's going to happen when. 

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And when you're making funding decisions, if you're looking at those two proposals side by side, bearing in mind that you're making decisions about giving away public money, if you're reviewing for a research council, for example, you're always going to fund the one that's better specified out of the two, if all else is equal, because you feel more confident about the use of public money, you feel more confident that that researcher is going to deliver what they've promised in their research plan. 

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And I guess the other reason for me that I feel it's increasingly important or where I recognise the importance more and more, is that my research life has changed a lot, from being a lone researcher doing a PhD with your supervisors, through to running big projects with research teams across disciplines, across countries, across different organisations. And having a really clear plan, which is a shared basis for working, gives you a much stronger foundation for developing that kind of collaborative work. 
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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>Mate Suba&scaron;i&#263;, PhD Researcher, University of Liverpool</b>

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Throughout my fieldwork, I had a research plan or plan for my fieldwork, and I was interviewing people in the post-war area, ordinary people, and I was hearing a lot of interesting stories, that I felt passionate about, and it was very, I felt also responsible about hearing those stories.

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But at one point, it became overwhelming, and I had to go back to my research plan and to remind myself, what's the point of my research? What are the questions I really should be asking? And that helped me a lot to get back on track with it. Otherwise, I would have many interviews. I would have to transcribe much longer than I need, because you need to be aware of the consequences of your behaviour. So research planning in that sense really helps you to stay focused. 