Student Research Educational Resources

Learning Objectives: 

1. Identify self-assessment resources and developing an initial understanding of my values aligned with my future career goals.
2. Differentiate between my current strengths and those I need to gain during the next four years.
3. Understand the resources offered by the SOAR (Student Opportunities for Advancement in Research) Office, enabling me to effectively utilize these resources to support my research and career development goals.

Learning Objectives: 

1. Identify and explain the methodology, results, and implications of research.
2. Outline the steps in developing a research project, from formulating a research question to achieving specific outcomes, such as presentations and publications.
3. Understand how to identify research opportunities, approach potential mentors, and navigate the process of engaging in meaningful research projects.

Describe Elements of a Strong Research Question: The key considerations for developing research questions include being based on existing literature, theory-driven, and appropriately specific. Dr. Aimee Gardner highlights the importance of creating opportunities for subsequent research questions and ensuring that findings have implications for future research and practice.

Identify the Overarching Purpose and Rationale of the Study: The purpose of any study is its major intent or objective, emphasizing the importance of grounding studies in conceptual or theoretical frameworks. Dr. Ratan outlines different types of research studies - explorative, experimental, observational, and translational - and stresses the significance of crafting clear purpose statements grounded in theoretical frameworks.

Conduct a Systematic Search of the Relevant Research Literature: A systematic literature starts with broad historical information and narrow down to recent studies within 5 to 10 years. Dr. McCluskey recommends identifying gaps in literature and circling back to the research questions or hypothesis. The Texas Medical Center Library is a great resource for accessing articles and receiving assistance from librarians.

Identify Gaps in the Literature to Inform Research: The three key strategies for identifying gaps are considering the amount of literature available, noting verbiage in conclusions and introductions of articles, and deciding what's missing. Dr. McCluskey suggests ways to validate the importance of one's study by stating what has not been reported before and how the study could be beneficial.

Define and Differentiate Between Research Question, Hypotheses, Purpose, Aim: A research question is a broad inquiry to be answered in the study, while a hypothesis is a predictive statement grounded in literature. Dr. Appelbaum clarifies the distinctions among research questions, hypothesis, purpose, aim, and objective, highlighting their roles in effectively communicating research goals and expertise.

Identify Common Statistical Approaches: Common statistical approaches include the independent samples t-test, repeated measures t-test, one-way ANOVA, and repeated measures ANOVA, providing scenarios to illustrate their application. Dr. Boedeker also introduces four key questions to determine the appropriate statistical approach: goal, independence of scores, measurement scale, and normal distribution of data.  

Writing Abstracts for Scientific Conferences and Beyond: Attending conferences provides opportunities for scientists, including student researchers to generate interest in their work. This online seminar, prepared and presented by Dr. Cliona Rooney, supplies an excellent set of guidelines on how to focus your message and what pitfalls to avoid in abstract preparation. Reviewers’ perspectives are covered as well as important points on how to structure your presentation. Tips to improve written (poster) and oral (platform) skills to deliver concise, effective presentations are given throughout the session.

Design and Present a Research Poster: Consider the eventual goal of the project before starting the poster design process. Dr. Sarkar provides four questions to prioritize content. He highlights the significance of visual aesthetics and marketing in poster design, offering tips on creating informative titles and concluding statements.

Poster Preparation Guidelines: Good poster presentation is essential to highlighting your research and serves to foster communication at conferences. This narrated PowerPoint presentation, prepared by the SOAR office, details the basics of good scientific poster design. Topics covered include poster layout, section content guidelines, poster dos and don’ts, presentation basics, and poster audience.

Design and Present through Digital Platforms: Emphasizing principles of engagement, attention, comprehension, and legality, McCluskey advises starting with visual delivery before incorporating active learning. Key takeaways focus on audience connection, attention, understanding, and legal compliance.

Characterize the Components of a Scholarly Publication and Article Types: The components of a scholarly publication typically include an introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections, with additional sections such as conclusions or limitations depending on the publication type. Dr. Boedeker emphasizes the importance of reviewing author guidelines and discusses various article types, such as innovation articles, short communications, systematic reviews, and original research studies, along with their specific requirements and implications for publishing research in medical education.

How to Write a Research Paper for Peer Reviewed Publication: Dr. Nital Appelbaum shares the basic processes of drafting a paper for a peer reviewed publication in a condensed tutorial. She covers how to identify a journal, author guidelines for submission, and a breakdown of the sections of the article you wish to submit. Submission, how to determine authorship, writing approaches or style, along with the use of citations and citation software are also covered. How to handle review, revision, and resubmission are discussed.  There is also advice on what steps to take should the paper be rejected.

Informed Consent Workshop Video or Presentation Handout is tailored for individuals involved in clinical research within the Baylor research community. This session offers an overview of informed consent and assent processes, familiarizes participants with applicable BCM and federal regulations, discusses quality improvement and consent monitoring, addresses common compliance issues, and provides relevant contacts and resources. The workshop aims to enhance skills related to facilitating investigator-research subject dialogue, minimizing risks, and appropriately documenting consent. Learn more about the Institutional Review Board and Research Compliance Training.

Introduction of Survey Design Administration and Analysis: Designing a survey to solicit informative results from study participants is essential to gaining perspective for healthcare researchers. Strategies for excellent health care survey design, including factors influencing completion, survey questions, and audience focus are among the many topics covered by Dr. Joel Purkiss in this video presentation. Dr. Purkiss also discusses methods for analyzing survey results including proactive design to ease analyses. Writing good questions including type, wording, and importantly focus form a substantial portion of the presentation.

Writing and Selling Your Case Report Video: This presentation, created by Dr. Allision Bertuch, gives the student the how and why of writing case reports. It alerts students to the things to consider such as potential audience, journal, and editors’ perspective. Strategies to effectively engage your readers are also covered. There are several examples of case reports that are presented to five the student walkthroughs of writing a case report.

JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a scientific video journal. Videos are arranged by subject area which students can search to find topics of interest. There are thousands of JoVE videos that enable self-directed learning about a variety of subjects including literature searches and data collection methods (e.g. Literature analysis, Survey Data, and Data Collection by Experiments), research topics (e.g. Medicine, Cancer Research) or education areas (Statistics, various science disciplines). A JoVE account can be created through TMC Library for full access using your @bcm email address here: https://library.tmc.edu/.

All of Us Research Program: The All of Us Research Program is a national effort that seeks to gather health data from one million or more people living in the United States to accelerate research and improve individualized health outcomes. This initiative spans various medical fields, offering an extensive and diverse dataset that has the potential to drive advancements in personalized medicine, uncover patterns in health disparities, and enhance our understanding of various diseases.

Quality Improvement Project Registry: The QI Project Registry is a separate resource specialized in quality improvement (QI) and patient safety initiatives. Visit the QI Project Registry website for registration and project viewing instructions.

SlicerDicer: Epic SlicerDicer is a self-service data analytics tool that offers extensive data exploration capabilities across clinical, access, research, and revenue domains. As medical students, you can utilize SlicerDicer to investigate specific topics, refine searches, identify trends, and access detailed line-level data. This tool is designed to streamline the process of initiating and analyzing research topics, significantly enhancing your research efficiency and effectiveness. Visit the SlicerDicer informational page to learn about the upcoming educational sessions and discover actionable insights that can advance your scholarly project.