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3 - Getting Good Ideas and Making the Most of Them

from Part I - From Idea to Reality: The Basics of Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2023

By
Christian S. Crandall  and
Mark Schaller
Edited by
Austin Lee Nichols  and
John Edlund
Austin Lee Nichols
Affiliation:
Central European University, Vienna
John Edlund
Affiliation:
Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
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Summary

Good research ideas and hypotheses do not just magically exist, begging to be tested; they must be discovered and nurtured. Systematic methods can help. Drawing on relevant scholarly literatures (e.g., research on creativity) and on the published personal reflections of successful scientists, this chapter provides an overview of strategies that can help researchers to (1) gather research ideas in the first place, (2) figure out whether an idea is worth working on, and (3) transform a promising idea into a rigorous scientific hypothesis. In doing so, it provides pragmatic advice about how to get good ideas and make the most of them.

Keywords

IdeasHypothesesCreativityResearch Methods
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Research Methods and Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Volume 1: Building a Program of Research
 , pp. 47 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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