ABSTRACT
Like people, each piece of research is unique and requires an individual approach. A set of rules such as have to be followed, for example, for the emergency fire procedures in your workplace or for the assembly of a motor car are inappropriate if you wish to research the impact of handedness on dyslexia or the role of the advocate for people with learning difficulties. How you go about addressing the particular question, in the context in which you have encountered it, is up to you to approach in ways based on your experience, wisdom and creative vision. One of the exciting things about being a researcher is that boundaries only exist in order to be moved, and innovation and creative practice are positively encouraged when they lead to new insights. For these reasons, I would never encourage a ‘cook book’ approach to research or simplistic adherence to lists of Do’s and Don’t’s which do not assist the process of genuine research. When I was a PhD student in a lab, our research group had a derogatory term to describe people (always from another lab, of course) who simply applied standard techniques to amass more and detailed information about a phenomenon: they were ‘stamp collectors’.
