Newcastle University

Working with 30+ countries: what is the best way to do it?

My name is Josie Tulip, and I am an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) starting my PhD at Newcastle University. Over the past 6 months, I have worked as a research associate on the COST Action IS1406 project. Specifically, I have helped co-ordinate 30+ translations of a practitioner survey which was developed by the COST action’s working groups, and translated by a number of teams from Europe and beyond. We received over 5,000 responses - a fantastic feat which could not have been accomplished without the dedication and teamwork demonstrated by everyone involved.

Although our procedure has been successful, there are many instances of large-scale research which quickly becomes unorganised and present a lot of data-based, methodological issues. For example, data dictionaries may not be clear for other researchers to utilise; or the methods that were used to obtain data (or even the data itself) are vague, difficult to access, or unavailable. Therefore, questions many researchers ask about conducting large-scale research is: ‘How do you organise such a large cohort of researchers from different backgrounds?’ and ‘How do you make the data, resources and findings systematically produced and transparent?’

From my experience on this project, there are three main things that are useful to keep in mind, namely:

1. Being organised

With any research, it is important to plan as much of how you are specifically going to achieve goals, which is especially important when you are working with a number of different teams in multiple locations. Professor James Law (the Head of the COST action) did this by setting clear targets and deadlines for teams so they had adequate time to organise how they were going to achieve them. Another important aspect of keeping things organised was ensuring that there were chances for regular face-to-face meetings for all COST members, so that issues and questions could be discussed, goals could be set, and tasks could be worked on and organised at a pace everyone was happy with. Emails are great when people are working in different locations, but some organisation is important to be done together when there are many colleagues working together.

For day-to-day organisation, it was essential to communicate with everyone regularly to ensure tasks were being completed, and if any issues had arisen. I kept up to date by making excel sheets of when I had last communicated with a team, what it was about, and what outstanding tasks they still had left to do. This meant that I would know exactly where I was with individual teams, and how we were progressing overall. This also meant I could communicate effectively with each team, and give clear updates to Professor Law about progress.

2. Being clear

One consideration when working with a large pool of colleagues from various backgrounds is to ensure you are providing information and instructions which are accessible to everyone involved. Directions need to be explicit, and you need to provide relevant information in the most clear and concise way possible. Colleagues have other commitments and priorities, so providing them vague information which they will have to spend a lot of time trying to understand will lead to demotivation and a higher chance of errors. They will also likely be spending time asking questions and clarifying what you have said, which expends time that should be spent on completing tasks.

To ensure your information is clear, it may be worth having a small team which looks over information before it is sent out. For example, Professor Law would initially send communications for the translation teams to me, so that I could give him feedback on anything that may not be clear, or that may need to be added. It is also important to ensure that you take on feedback of others if something hadn’t been clear, and consider that next time when communicating with team members.

3. Being systematic

Although this generally feeds into the previous two points, there are some specific things here to consider. Ensuring that colleagues are on the same page, and able to complete goals in a similar way is essential to producing high-quality and transparent data. There will always be differences in opinion as to what should be included in materials and procedures, so it is important to make sure that everyone has a voice when initially creating them. This was achieved by the aforementioned COST Action meetings, which gave colleagues a dynamic platform to do this.

Furthermore, having a deadline and boundaries for editing materials is needed. In my experience, there has to be a fine balance between allowing changes and having to say ‘no’ to suggestions. You need to ask yourself if those changes really impact how data will be collected, because even the smallest edit makes more work for everyone. The more that you do this, the more time is used by colleagues, and it is less likely that materials will be systematic; which produces lower quality data. When you are working with many colleagues, this issue is further compounded. Therefore, to establish high-quality and systematic procedures, materials and data; make sure that colleagues (are at least mostly) in agreement of the procedure and materials, and attempt to include everyone in the development as much as possible. However, make sure to have boundaries and deadlines in place to ensure highly efficient and systemized work between groups.

This seems useful for large-scale research, but how is this applicable to my own career?

My time working on the COST project is coming to an end, but I can say that as I start my PhD, working on this part of the COST Action’s project has been a great learning experience for my own project. It is easy to underestimate how considering the smaller, simpler things in advance can save you a lot of time, effort and difficulty. Clear, effective communication and being systematic from the beginning of my project will allow me to not only disseminate my findings transparently, but also produce clear and high-quality information for (should the stars align) when others may wish to examine and replicate my study. This is something all early career researchers should understand and feel able to do.

Written by Josie Tulip

Last modified: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:19:16 BST