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How to communicate your research more effectively

Author: guest contributor.

by Angie Voyles Askham, Content Marketing Intern

"Scientists need to excite the public about their work in part because the public is paying for it, and in part because science has very important things to say about some of the biggest problems society faces."

Stephen S. Hall has been reporting and writing about science for decades. For the past ten years, he's also been helping researchers at New York University improve their writing skills through the school's unique  Science Communication Workshops . In our interview below, he explains why the public deserves good science communication and offers some tips for how researchers can make their writing clear and engaging.

How would you descr ibe your role as a science journalist?

I’ve always made a distinction between "science writer" and a writer who happens to be interested in science. That may sound like wordplay, but I think it captures what we aspire to do. Even as specialists, science journalists wear several hats: we explain, we report, we investigate, we step back and provide historical context to scientific developments to help people understand what’s new, why something is controversial, who drove a major innovation. And like any writer, we look for interesting, provocative, and deeply reported ways to tell these stories.

I know you from the science communication workshop that’s offered to NYU graduate students. One of the most important things that I got out of the workshop, at least initially, was training myself out of the stuffy academic voice that I think a lot researchers fall into when writing academic papers. Why do you think scientists fall into this particular trap, and how do you help them get out of it?

Scientists are trained—and rightly so—to describe their work in neutral, objective terms, qualifying all observations and openly acknowledging experimental limitations. Those qualities play very well in scientific papers and talks, but are terrible for effective communication to the general public. In our Science Communication workshops at NYU, we typically see that scientists tend to communicate in dense, formal and cautious language; they tell their audiences too much; they mimic the scientific literature’s affinity for passive voice; and they slip into jargon and what I call “jargonish,” defensive language. Over ten years of conducting workshops, we’ve learned to attack these problems on two fronts: pattern recognition (training people to recognize bad writing/speaking habits and fixing them) and psychological "deprogramming" (it’s okay to leave some details and qualifications out!). And a key ingredient to successful communication is understanding your audience; there is no such thing as the "general public," but rather a bunch of different potential audiences, with different needs and different levels of expertise. We try to educate scientists to recognize the exact audience they're trying to reach—what they need to know and, just as important, what they don't need to know.

What are some other common mistakes that you see researchers making when they’re trying to communicate about their work, either with each other or with the public?

We see the same tendencies over and over again: vocabulary (not simply jargon, but common expressions—such as gene “expression”—that are second-hand within a field, but not clear to non-experts); abstract, complicated explanations rather than using everyday language; sentences that are too long; and “optics” (paragraphs that are too long and appear monolithic to readers). We’ve found that workshops are the perfect setting to play out the process of using everyday language to explain something without sacrificing scientific accuracy.

Why is it important for researchers to be better communicators?

Scientists need to learn to tell their own stories, first and foremost, because society needs their expertise, their perspective, their evidence-based problem solving skills for the future. But the lay public, especially in an era where every fact seems up for grabs, needs to be reminded of what the scientific method is: using critical thinking and rigorous analysis of facts to reach evidence-based conclusions. Scientists need to excite the public about their work in part because the public is paying for it, and in part because science has very important things to say about some of the biggest problems society faces—climate change, medical care, advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, among many other issues. As climate scientist Michael Mann said in a celebrated 2014 New York Times OpEd, scientists can no longer stay on the sidelines in these important public debates.

As a science journalist, part of your job is to hunt for interesting stories to tell. How can scientists make their work more accessible to people like you—or to other people outside of their specific area of research—so that their stories are told more widely?

The key word in your question is “stories.” Think like a writer. What’s the story behind your discovery? What were the ups and downs on the way to the finding? Where does this fit into a larger history of science narrative? Was there a funny incident or episode in the work (humor is a great way to draw and sustain public interest)? Was there a conflict or competition that makes the work even more interesting? Is there a compelling historical or contemporary figure involved that will help you humanize the science? It's been our-longstanding belief that scientists have a great intuitive feel for good storytelling (we incorporate narrative training in our workshops), but just don’t think about it when it comes to describing their own work. The other key thing is to explain why your research matters.

One of the ways that many researchers try to share their work is through Twitter, but I noticed that on the NYU website it says you’re a Twitter conscientious objector. Why is that? What effect do you think Twitter has had on science communication and journalism in general?

I actually think Twitter can be a great tool for science communication, and many of my colleagues use it deftly. I tend to gravitate toward stories that everyone is not talking about, so Twitter doesn’t help much in that regard. The larger reason I’m a Twitter “refusenik,” as my colleague Dan Fagin sometimes calls me, is that I think the technology has been widely abused to disseminate misinformation, intimidate enemies, and subvert democratic norms; I don’t use it primarily for those reasons.

Are there any other tips that you can offer researchers who want to be better communicators and just aren’t sure where to start?

One first step might be to see if your institution offers any communication training and to take advantage of those programs; if not, think about how you might establish a program. We’ve posted a few of the things we’ve learned at NYU on our website ; we’ve also established a publishing platform for science communicators at NYU called the Cooper Square Review , which is a good way for scientists to get experience publishing their own work and reaching a larger public.

Stephen S. Hall  has been reporting and writing about science for nearly 30 years. In addition to numerous cover stories in the New York Times Magazine, where he also served as a Story Editor and Contributing Writer, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and a number of other outlets. He is also the author of six non-fiction books about contemporary science. In addition to teaching the Science Communication Workshops at NYU, he also teaches for NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has taught graduate seminars in science writing and explanatory journalism at Columbia University.

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Effectively Communicating Research

Intensive course designed to provide researchers with the skills necessary to express their science clearly to diverse audiences

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Course goals.

• Understand how and why to effectively communicate your research through a variety of platforms.
• Understand the structure of content that is appropriate and how to achieve the highest quality for each mode of scientific communication.
• Learn how to make written and graphic content more accessible and engaging.
• Know how to deliver oral presentations effectively with diverse audiences and settings.
• Learn approaches to request and respond to feedback from mentors, colleagues, and external reviewers.

How do you effectively draft your scientific message so that it has the optimal chance to be accepted for publication? How do you communicate your science in an oral presentation? How much text is appropriate for a poster? What are some guidelines and tips for dealing with the media? Communication is an essential part of your research and a crucial component for a successful career as a researcher.

Effectively Communicating Research  is a two-day, intensive course offered by Harvard Catalyst. The course is designed to provide fellows and junior faculty with the skills necessary to express their science clearly to diverse audiences; to prepare abstracts, manuscripts, and posters, and to speak effectively.

With the guidance and expertise of the course faculty, including journal editors and leading scientists, participants will acquire the tools necessary to convey their science effectively.

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November 14 & 16, 2022

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Participants accepted into the course must commit to fully participate in two days of the course.

As long as public health conditions permit, we will be running this event in-person , on the Harvard Medical School campus.  Participants will be required to follow all Covid-19 guidelines outlined by Harvard Medical School.

Fellows and junior faculty who are in the process of writing for publication or creating communication materials for scientific oral or poster presentations.

We believe that the research community is strengthened by understanding how a number of factors including gender identity, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, culture, religion, national origin, language, disability, and age shape the environment in which we live and work, affect each of our personal identities, and impacts all areas of human health.

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Published on August 5, 2019

Top tips and tools for effective research communication

Academic researchers spend a significant proportion of their careers speaking to specialist audiences at conferences and applying for grants. However, sometimes even the best specialists struggle to clearly and concisely explain their work to a non-specialist audience. In the second article of our three-part series about the value of effective research communication, Oxentia consultants Dr Gaelle Coullon and Dr Lauren Sosdian explore some of the common mistakes researchers encounter when communicating to a non-specialist audience and provide a few tips and techniques to improve communication skills.

The ability to communicate with a non-specialist audience about the importance of your work doesn’t just make for a great TED talk. Research communication is a valuable skill for all academics to hone. It can help convince the listener about the importance of your work, it can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and improve how academics work with technology transfer offices, and it can help to make PhDs and Early Career Researchers more employable. We explored the benefits of good research communication in more detail in part one of this series .

Over the years, several different approaches have been taken to help researchers and entrepreneurs from all fields hone their communication skills. Below is a selection of four tools that we use when working with researchers and entrepreneurs which can help them tackle some of the challenges of research communication.

1. Curse of knowledge. Coined in Made to Stick 1 , the ‘curse of knowledge’ describes how knowing something very well means you become immune to the confusing and unique aspects of what you know. This can leave you unable to recognise when you are using technical terminology or jargon. However, at the other end of the spectrum, good research communication is not about ‘dumbing it down’. Good research communicators assume their audience is intelligent but just not equipped with the same technical expertise or language.

How can you overcome the curse of knowledge without ‘dumbing it down’? Complex ideas can be effectively communicated to any audience if the speaker can start by clearly explaining the core idea behind their research, using examples and metaphors to which we can all relate. Role-playing can help. For example, during our communication workshops, we would pair a researcher in microbiology who is preparing a marketing brief for her technology with a colleague in the department of sociology. Acting as a sounding board , this colleague would help her recognise the confusing elements of her work and identify better ways of explaining it.

2. Making it relevant. Even if researchers recognise that they aren’t communicating their work in a way that anyone can understand, many struggle in finding an alternative approach that would work better for a non-specialist audience. At a conference or in a journal publication, researchers are typically required to focus on technical descriptions of their methods and findings. With a non-specialist audience, the focus needs to be on the bottom-line of why we should care and what effect the research may have on the wider world. As pointed by Monica Metzler, founder and executive director of the Illinois Science Council (ISC), “the key difference between a technical talk and a lay audience talk is that we don’t want to know all about it” 2 .

One of the techniques we use to help researchers overcome the detail focus is a Twitter pitch . Used as part of a sprint toolkit workshop, this exercise takes participants out of their comfort zone by encouraging them to zero in on why we should care about their work and explain it in 280 characters.

3. Speaking the right language. When it comes to crafting the words used to describe their work, some researchers fail to recognise that some words, such as ‘theory’, ‘bias’ or ‘scheme’, have different meanings to different audiences. A Physics Today article 3 illustrates this point in relation to climate change – where the word ‘aerosol’ could easily be misunderstood by the public as a ’spray can’ when scientists actually mean ‘tiny atmospheric particle’.

Knowing your audience goes a long way in avoiding this pitfall. Understanding your audience will help convey why others should care about the research, but also help you tailor the story that you want to tell your audience. Don’t forget, the language you use when explaining your research at a public outreach conference will be very different to that which you use when pitching to an investor for a university spinout or how you explain your long days in the lab to your partner or friends.

One of the techniques that we use to help researchers better understand their audience is the no-bell exercise , a short exercise where participants pitch their work to colleagues from other departments who ring a bell if they hear a word or phrase that they do not understand. The objective is to finish the 3-minute pitch with no bells. This exercise forces participants to recognise when they are using jargon and then correct it, with the help of their colleagues.

4. Telling a story. Finally, really good research communicators tell a great story, one that uses clear, concise, and concrete language and examples. A brief history of the research project perhaps, the team who developed it, or how future work in this field could help improve someone’s life helps to engage your audience in the research question.

The series of short sprint exercises that we have developed as part of our training programmes are designed to help researchers craft compelling stories as well as new fun and interesting ways of talking about their research to a wide range of audiences. We explore how this works in practice in part three of our series.

How Oxentia can help

Oxentia, Oxford’s Global Innovation Consultancy, has worked with researchers in different disciplines at universities and institutions around the world for over fourteen years. Our experienced practitioner consultants work in over 70 countries for clients in governments, corporations, development agencies, and universities. This work has enabled us to develop training programmes featuring practical exercises and tool kits to help researchers better communicate their research to wider audiences, whether in STEM subjects or in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Why do you think research communication is an important skill to develop in academia? Do researchers at your institution have access to communication training? Do you know other exercises and tips for effective research communication? Let us know in the comments on LinkedIn.

1 Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007), “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”, Random House.

2 Science (2013), “Dispelling Myths About Science Communication”, https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2013/02/dispelling-myths-about-science-communication

3 Somerville and Hassol (2011), “Communicating the science of climate change”, Physics Today 64(10), pp 48-53.

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What does research say about how to effectively communicate about science?

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Andrew Maynard is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on The Science of Science Communication, and is a co-author on the report "Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda."

Dietram Scheufele is vice-chair of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's Committee on The Science of Science Communication, and is a co-author on the report "Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda."

Arizona State University and University of Wisconsin–Madison provide funding as members of The Conversation US.

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Truth seems to be an increasingly flexible concept in politics. At least that’s the impression the Oxford English Dictionary gave recently, as it declared “post-truth” the 2016 Word of the Year . What happens when decisions are based on misleading or blatantly wrong information? The answer is quite simple – our airplanes would be less safe, our medical treatments less effective, our economy less competitive globally, and on and on.

Many scientists and science communicators have grappled with disregard for, or inappropriate use of, scientific evidence for years – especially around contentious issues like the causes of global warming, or the benefits of vaccinating children. A long debunked study on links between vaccinations and autism, for instance, cost the researcher his medical license but continues to keep vaccination rates lower than they should be.

Only recently, however, have people begun to think systematically about what actually works to promote better public discourse and decision-making around what is sometimes controversial science. Of course scientists would like to rely on evidence, generated by research, to gain insights into how to most effectively convey to others what they know and do.

As it turns out, the science on how to best communicate science across different issues, social settings and audiences has not led to easy-to-follow, concrete recommendations.

About a year ago, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine brought together a diverse group of experts and practitioners to address this gap between research and practice. The goal was to apply scientific thinking to the process of how we go about communicating science effectively. Both of us were a part of this group (with Dietram as the vice chair).

The public draft of the group’s findings – “ Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda ” – has just been published. In it, we take a hard look at what effective science communication means and why it’s important; what makes it so challenging – especially where the science is uncertain or contested; and how researchers and science communicators can increase our knowledge of what works, and under what conditions.

Evidence for effective approaches

As we discovered, effective science communication – including listening to and engaging with audiences – is particularly complex, and far from simple to study. It’s highly dependent on what is being communicated, its relevance to who’s participating in the conversation and the social and media dynamic around the issues being addressed (especially if those issues or their policy implications are contentious). But it also depends on what people feel and believe is right and the societal or political contexts within which communication and engagement occur. And this makes getting it right and deriving lessons that can be applied across issues and contexts particularly challenging.

Because of this complexity, the practice of science communication (and there are many great practitioners) is currently more of an art than a science. Good communicators – whether reporters, bloggers, scientists or people active on social media and platforms like YouTube – typically learn from others, or through professional training, and often through trial and error. Unfortunately, the social sciences haven’t provided science communicators with concrete, evidence-based guidance on how to communicate more effectively.

Two earlier NAS meetings identified how diverse the areas of expertise are when it comes to research on science communication. Research spans behavioral economics and sociology along with media and communication studies. They also began to map out what we do and don’t know about what works.

For instance, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the “deficit model” of science communication – the assumption that if we just “fill people up” with science knowledge and understanding, they’ll become increasingly rational decision-makers – simply does not work . This is not because people are irrational; rather, we all have our own built-in psychologies of how we make sense of information, and how we weigh different factors when making decisions.

We also know all of us are predisposed to accept, reject or interpret information based on a plethora of mental shortcuts, including a tendency to take on face value information that seems to confirm our worldview .

And we know how information is presented, or framed, can have a profound impact on how it is interpreted and used. The power of the “ Frankenfood ” frame, for example, used with genetically modified foods, has nothing to do with providing new information. Instead, the term subconsciously connects genetically modified organisms to mental concepts we all share – worrisome ideas about scientists creating unnatural organisms with unintended consequences – and raises moral questions about science going too far.

Decisions factor in more than facts

Science communication may involve communicating scientific consensus about, for instance, the benefits and risks of vaccines to patients. Or it may encompass much broader societal debates about the ethical, moral or political questions raised by science.

For example, our ability to edit the genetic code of organisms is developing at breakneck speed. Over the next decade, CRISPR and similar technologies will have a profound impact on our lives, from how we modify plants and animals and control disease, to how we produce our food, and even how we change our own genetic code as human beings.

But it will also present all of us with questions that cannot be answered with science alone. What does it mean to be human, for instance? Is it ethical to edit the genome of unborn embryos? If people involved in those decisions don’t have the opportunity to grasp the evidence-informed implications of the technology and make informed choices about its development and use, the future becomes little more than a lottery.

For those communicating the science, then, the endeavor comes with some degree of responsibility. Even deciding what information to share, and how to share it, involves personal values, beliefs and perspectives, and can potentially have far-reaching consequences.

There’s an especially high level of ethical responsibility associated with communication designed to influence opinions, behavior and actions. Scientists are well equipped to document the public health risks of lowered vaccination rates , for example. The question of whether we should mandate vaccinations or remove belief-based exemptions , however, is an inherently political one that scientists alone cannot answer.

Mapping out a better way

At some level, all science communication has embedded values. Information always comes wrapped in a complex skein of purpose and intent – even when presented as impartial scientific facts. Despite, or maybe because of, this complexity, there remains a need to develop a stronger empirical foundation for effective communication of and about science.

Addressing this, the National Academies draft report makes an extensive number of recommendations. A few in particular stand out:

• Use a systems approach to guide science communication. In other words, recognize that science communication is part of a larger network of information and influences that affect what people and organizations think and do.
• Assess the effectiveness of science communication. Yes, researchers try, but often we still engage in communication first and evaluate later. Better to design the best approach to communication based on empirical insights about both audiences and contexts. Very often, the technical risk that scientists think must be communicated have nothing to do with the hopes or concerns public audiences have.
• Get better at meaningful engagement between scientists and others to enable that “ honest, bidirectional dialogue ” about the promises and pitfalls of science that our committee chair Alan Leshner and others have called for.
• Consider social media’s impact – positive and negative.
• Work toward better understanding when and how to communicate science around issues that are contentious, or potentially so.

Addressing these and other areas is going to take focused research efforts that draw on expertise across many different areas. It’s going to need strategic and serious investment in the “science” of science communication. It will also demand much greater engagement and collaboration between those who study science communication and those who actually do it. And it’ll require serious thinking about why we communicate science, and how we can work respectfully with audiences to ensure that the science we do communicate about is of value to society.

This will not be easy. But the alternative – slipping further into a post-truth world where disdain for evidence creates risks that could be avoided – gives us little option but to dig deeper into the science of science communication, so that science and evidence are more effectively incorporated into the decisions people make.

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Advice on Research Communications Skills

Great researchers are great communicators.  This page provides some resources to help you develop your communication skills.

• How to read a paper .  S. Keshav.  Note:  The general principles here are very useful (read a paper in several iterations of increasing depth depending upon your objectives and interest).  However, the amount of time it may take you to read a paper will vary greatly depending on the paper and the area.  Assuming you can understand a paper deeply in just a few hours may be unrealistic for some papers in some areas.  It may take you days or weeks.  Do not get discouraged if it takes you more time than suggested here.
• Go to Princeton colloquia, job talks, area meetings, general exams, pre-FPOs and FPOs.  Think about what speakers in each context are doing well (or not so well) to communicate their content effectively and memorably.
• How to give a great research talk .  Simon Peyton Jones.
• Presenting a technical talk .  Nick Feamster and Alex Gray.

General Advice & Courses

• Read more .  Of anything that is well written.  Doing so improves your vocabulary and exposes you to varied sentence structures.  For instance, subscribe to National Geographic or the Atlantic.  Start immediately.  Improving communication skills is a long-term project and it pays to start immediately.
• Take one of Princeton's writing seminars for graduate students when you have time. 
• Join one of Princeton's dissertation boot camps (which doesn't just have to be for writing your thesis, but could be for writing a paper)
• Take Stanford's free online writing class for the sciences when you have time. 
• Read article on  Mathematical Writing

Internet Articles

• The science of scientific writing . George Gopen and Judith Swan.
• Writer's block is not a struggle with your writing but with your thinking . Write your way out of it. 
• Story-telling 101:  Writing tips for academics . Nick Feamster and Alex Gray.
• Dave Patterson's writing advice .  Dave Patterson.
• How to write a great research paper .  Simon Peyton Jones.
• The curse of knowledge .  Benjamin Pierce.
• How to give a bad talk (circa 1983) .  Dave Patterson.
• Style: Toward clarity and grace .  Joseph Williams.
• How to write a lot:  A practical guide to academic writing .  Paul Silvia.
• The elements of style .  William Strunk and E. B. White.
• Writing for computer science.   Justin Zobel.

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Novel approaches to communication skills development: The untapped potential of qualitative research immersion

Amy s. porter.

a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA

Cameka Woods

Erica c. kaye, associated data.

Participation in qualitative research, particularly analysis of recorded medical dialogue, offers real-time, longitudinal immersion that can strengthen clinical trainee communication skills. The study objective was to explore how qualitative research participation impacts clinical trainees’ self-perceived communication skills development and practice.

In this study, a 17-member multidisciplinary working group of child life specialists, advanced practice providers, undergraduate/medical students, residents, fellows, attending physicians, social scientists, and career researchers with recent qualitative and communication research experience assembled to discuss this topic using a structured discussion guide. Content analysis was used to identify concepts and themes.

Three key themes characterizing the impact of qualitative research participation on aspiring clinicians’ communication skills development and practice arose – the 3Cs: (1) C onnection, therapeutic alliance, and accompaniment; (2) C larity and prognostic communication; (3) C ompassion, empathy, and understanding. Participants emphasized that qualitative research learning improved their understanding of patient/family lived experiences, preparing them for future clinical encounters, strengthening their emotional intelligence, and promoting self-care, resilience, and professional affirmation.

Conclusions

Immersion in clinical communication through participation in qualitative research is an under-utilized resource for supporting clinical trainees in communication skills development.

The process of collaborative knowledge production through the collective exploration of an a priori question related to group members’ collective experiences is methodologically innovative. Further, re-thinking qualitative research participation as an underutilized educational opportunity is pedagogically novel, and leaders in medical education and qualitative research should collaborate to realize the potential of this teaching tool.

• • Qualitative research participation offers immersion in clinical communication.
• • Participation impact characterized by the 3 C’s: 1) Connection, 2) Clarity, 3) Compassion.
• • This is an under-utilized medical education resource for communication skills development.
• • Medical education and qualitative research leaders should collaborate.

1. Introduction

Communication training for clinical trainees often involves single timepoint simulation as a “gold standard” for practicing navigation of challenging conversations [ [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] , [11] , [12] ]. Due to time, staffing, and resource constraints, medical educators face challenges realizing high volume of real-time communication learning opportunities [ 1 ]. Clinicians-in-training are exposed infrequently and inconsistently to in-depth, communication-heavy encounters between clinicians and patients and their families during difficult moments in the illness course [ 5 , 13 , 14 ]. As a result, trainees lack robust opportunities to witness communication and consider which modeled approaches they want to integrate into their own communication toolboxes. Further, depending on supervisory ratios, trainees may not have sufficient opportunities to observe clinicians with a range of emotional dexterity skills to learn and reflect on how (or how not) to communicate during challenging medical encounters.

Healthcare communication science researchers have amassed large repositories of recorded medical dialogue to answer questions about best practices for communication between patients, families, and healthcare professionals; however, little precedent exists for collaboration between communication researchers and medical education leaders to optimize use of this under-utilized resource to offer learners opportunities for developing communication skills through participation in communication research. Existing literature explores how guided reflection activities such as “The Healer’s Art” and other self-contemplative didactics positively impact trainees’ communication skills, empathy, self-awareness, and overall clinical practice [ [15] , [16] , [17] ], yet the potential educational value and impact of qualitative research experiences on trainees’ learning and communication skills remains understudied and poorly understood.

To address this knowledge gap, we convened a multidisciplinary working group of students, clinicians, and researchers to consider the question: “How does engaging in qualitative communication research (i.e., listening to audio recordings and/or reading transcripts of recorded clinical encounters) impact trainees as professionals (both clinicians and researchers) and as individuals holistically?” The Qu alitative research as E ducation for S tudents and clinicians-in- Tr aining (QUEST) working group comprised individuals affiliated with a communication research lab within an academic institution who each had recent experiences participating in qualitative research on topics related to communication. The working group examined whether engaging in qualitative research involving patients and families could influence the way students and clinicians-in-training learn and practice communication. In this article, we summarize findings from the QUEST working group and propose immersion in qualitative research datasets as an innovative alternative or complement to standardized simulated communication skills training.

In this study, we used an adaptation of autoethnography to bring together a team of authors with common experiences related to qualitative research participation, collectively share our perceptions and generate reflective data about our experiences with qualitative research, and collaborate with one another to analyze the data and present our insights. In traditional autoethnographic methods, an individual uses a reliable process to generate data from their own experience, observations, and reflections and then reflects on and synthesizes these data to inform a larger context [ 18 ]. Koopman et al describes autoethnography as the ultimate form of reflexivity, a mechanism by which to explore personal perceptions, values, and beliefs through the lens of lived experience, culture, and self-other interactions [ 19 ]. In this project, our authorship team wished to gain deeper insights into the potential influence of qualitative research participation on communication education for students and clinicians. In deciding to study ourselves, we developed a modified form of autoethnography, which we describe below. This paper reports the findings from the QUEST working group with all group members represented as authors; there were not separate groups representing “researchers” and “study participants,” but rather one collaborative group working together to explore an a priori question related to our collective experiences. As such, the project did not require IRB approval.

The authorship team convened as the QUEST working group, comprising a 17-member group of students, staff, and faculty with recent qualitative communication research experience, including undergraduate/medical students, residents, fellows, child life specialists, advanced practice providers, and clinical research staff. Within the Quality of Life and Palliative Care Research Division, all learners who had participated in communication research by listening to recorded medical dialogue or reading transcripts of interviews with patients, families, and clinicians at a particular academic institution over the past 3 years were invited via email to participate (n = 21). No exclusionary requirements were applied. Though all invited individuals expressed interest in joining the QUEST working group, a total of 17 people ultimately participated. Individuals agreed to participate in working group conversations by responding in writing to the email invitation. All working group members had participated in analysis of at least one qualitative data set related to communication, with most participating in qualitative research for at least one year (although outliers included 1 member with a 2-month qualitative research elective and 1 member with 5+ years of qualitative research participation). Most of the group was comprised of nursing/medical trainees (e.g., undergraduate, graduate, nursing, and medical students; fellows; n=13); the group also included 2 clinical research staff who engage in communication with patients and families, 1 child life specialist who participated in qualitative research, and 1 clinician-researcher who oversees qualitative research studies. Members’ training, roles, and experiences interfacing with different types of qualitative data are presented in Table 1 .

QUEST working group member characteristics.

The three lead authors crafted a semi-structured working group discussion guide, with iterative revisions to refine questions for content and language. Supplemental Figure presents the guide, encompassing a semi-structured outline of questions prompts and probes to organize and support cooperative conversation. Working group members were encouraged via email to join a virtual 120-minute discussion; those who could not attend were given an opportunity to respond to the questions in writing. A physician-medical anthropologist with training and expertise in group engagement facilitated the virtual discussion. Twelve QUEST working group members, including the three lead authors, attended the recorded virtual session using WebEx (an online platform for virtual group meetings). The conversation introduction included reminders about the importance of reflexivity and how participants’ positionality influences (and may bias) perspectives. Throughout the virtual discussion session, each participant remained engaged and interacted with most question probes, yielding multiple responses for each question. A working group format was used intentionally to explore the targeted question, given the positive potential for group dynamics to help with idea generativity and allow reflections to build upon others’ thoughts and observations [ 20 , 21 ]. Most working group members were students and trainees or clinical research staff, interacting within similar hierarchical tiers. Recognizing the potential for hierarchy to constrain conversation, the one faculty member in a supervisory position observed quietly, engaging only when asked a direct question by another working group member.

Five working group members were unable to attend the virtual discussion due to their training schedules, and they wished to participate in the exploratory question. To ensure inclusion of their voices and perspectives, they were given an opportunity to provide written reflection responses to each item in the structured discussion guide; these lengthy responses were shared via email to contribute their perspectives to the conversation.

Following data generation, the three lead authors initially conducted memo-writing of the recorded discussion and written responses to begin reflecting on and discussing emerging patterns in working group conversation content [ 22 ]. Memo-writers purposefully represented different perspectives from a current clinical trainee, a research staff member, and a faculty member, with iterative discussions held in person and via email to explore how different viewpoints influenced reflections in memos and examine internal biases shaping thoughts and assessments. Content analysis was used to synthesize working group transcripts as this method provides a rigorous process for identification of concepts and themes within text. As concepts were inductively generated via memo-writing, findings were shared with all QUEST members for iterative reflection and input. The QUEST working group collaborated to synthesize and review key themes, with cycles of review and refinement among authors [ 23 , 24 ]. The final report was presented to the working group for member-checking [ 25 ], with confirmation from all authors that thematic findings reflected the comprehensive content of working group discussions.

Working group members consistently emphasized the value of immersion in qualitative research, highlighting the utility of engagement with audio recorded and/or transcribed clinical encounters that included challenging communication scenarios ( Fig. 1 ). Nearly all members described the impact of qualitative research experiences on their personal communication skills and practice, and two driving themes emerged to characterize the “value added” by qualitative research: 1) the tangible benefits of exposure to difficult medical communication prior to real-life encounters; and 2) the potential for long-lasting impact and sustained influence of qualitative research experiences on future clinical practice, including three specific impacts on communication skills (“the 3Cs”).

Influences of qualitative research immersion on learner communication skills.

3.1. Immersive learning prior to real-life training and practice

For many working group members, communication challenges in healthcare were largely hypothetical prior to their participation in qualitative research. Coding real clinical encounters as part of qualitative research revealed the complexity of interpersonal communication and offered lessons for how to navigate difficult conversations with actual patients and families: “I really saw models of what this actually looks like and how do patients and their families respond to different styles.” Authors with limited previous exposure to clinical encounters also shared how immersion in raw qualitative data helped them recognize the emotional intensity experienced by patients, families, and clinicians:

“Listening [to audio-recorded medical dialogue] really helped me to understand how much tension there can be in a room… Just listening to long pauses of silence helped me understand that [prognostic communication] can be really challenging emotionally, both on the clinician side and the family and patient side, how challenging it can be to navigate that both as a parent and as a clinician.”

Another member described how her participation in qualitative research as a medical student informed her future practice as a resident:

“I began intern year in the intensive care unit and had several patients die within my first two to three weeks of residency. Communicating with these families about the goals or priorities of their loved one and then having to tell them when that person had died required attention to detail, meticulous word choice, and rapport building. All of these skills were taught or honed by the coding experience.”

Universally, working group members highlighted how exposure to “real” clinical encounters offered them unique experiences to observe communication skills and reflect on interpersonal dynamics that they could carry forward into their future clinical practice.

3.2. Sustained influence on future clinical practice

Overall, working group members agreed that participating in qualitative research had a greater impact than they anticipated on the way that they provide clinical care. One child life specialist explained specifically how real clinical encounters still shape her everyday clinical practice:

“I was not anticipating the coding experience [would] play such an influential role in my day-to-day clinical practice. The process has made me more reflective in my everyday interactions with patients and families, as I have various narratives to refer back to, and [they] are typically at the forefront of my thoughts when interacting with families now.”

A palliative care physician explained how specific clinician-patient or clinician-family interactions persist in a clinician’s mind through years of clinical practice: “Some of the quotes stick with you and influence your practice.” Many working group members echoed this idea of staying power – conversations witnessed through reading transcripts or listening to audio recordings remained impressed on their minds as reference points for choosing language, reflecting on clinical encounters, and remembering the complexities of patients’ and families’ experiences.

The working group also identified three key themes characterizing how immersion in qualitative communication research influenced aspiring clinicians’ self-perceived communication skills development – the 3Cs ( Table 2 ): 1) C onnection, therapeutic alliance, and accompaniment; 2) C larity and prognostic communication; and 3) C ompassion, empathy, and understanding.

3Cs: Key themes characterizing the impact of qualitative research participation on learners’ communication skills development.

3.3. Skills for aspiring clinicians: connection

Working group members described how witnessing clinicians’ approaches for establishing connection and building therapeutic alliance with patients and families helped them learn how to develop their own skills. Many mentioned the importance of listening carefully to patients and families, as well as the value of silence:

“This experience helped me further develop active listening skills. I think silence is something that often makes people uncomfortable; however, this experience made me realize how many families…want and need a space to process and have others actively listen to their thoughts and emotions. It was very humbling to be a part of that process.”

As detailed in Table 2 , others discussed how they came to realize that affirming patients’ and families’ emotions is essential to establishing therapeutic alliance and how witnessing clinicians establish rapport with families led them to aspire to do the same in their own clinical practice.

Several working group members contemplated the sensation of privilege upon entering what felt like experiencing prognostic communication with the patient and family – accompanying them through the illness trajectory. One nurse practitioner explained that, despite having been a bedside oncology nurse prior to participating in qualitative research, listening to recorded conversations was the first time she had been “in the room” during prognostic disclosure:

“What really struck me was how you do feel like you’re living through the process with the family… Living all those intense moments with the family feels extremely different than even what the providers themselves might feel.”

Some participants felt the emotion of experiencing disease reevaluation discussions with the families so intensely that they became uncomfortable and concerned they might be intruding: “In a way, it almost feels like you are listening to a private conversation, like you’re impinging on their privacy.” All participants agreed that reviewing transcripts and recordings represented more than a research task – for many, it felt like an honor to witness families most challenging moments.

3.4. Skills for aspiring clinicians: clarity

One working group member, who began qualitative research as an undergraduate student and is currently a medical resident, explained how her prior experiences with qualitative research actively motivate her to be clearer in her communication with patients and families:

“My experience with [reading transcripts] has…informed core beliefs I have regarding communication with patients, especially related to giving bad news… Remembering how [a particular] family felt from not discussing the full extent of the truth encourages me to…talk about all possible outcomes early… It also motivates me to be honest, even when it is hard. So many parents [in interviews]…said they didn’t want someone to ‘beat around the bush.’ I want to tell the truth in a kind way and set the scene for success.”

Another member, who was exposed to qualitative research while practicing as a child life specialist, also underscored how qualitative research training has helped her better understand the value of intentionality when communicating bad news, including exploring and accepting patients’ and families’ reactions to the news conveyed:

“The experience of coding has definitely influenced my clinical practice. One parent…shared that her first thought when our team offered legacy building interventions was: ‘Are you f***ing kidding me?’ I find myself actively thinking about this parent and her reaction every time that I am about to offer these types of interventions – and furthermore thinking about the themes that emerged when coding this data that reiterated the various ways our introduction of these interventions may be improved.”

Several working group members also explained that clinical communication research projects led them to develop heightened awareness of the impact of language on patients/families: “[I developed] awareness that the words that we use can have these long-lasting ramifications and impact. It gives you a heightened cognizance of how important the language and interactions are.”

3.5. Skills for aspiring clinicians: compassion

Compassion through understanding and empathy was a pervasive theme across working group members’ reflections on participating in qualitative research: “I think [participation in qualitative research] helps foster empathy and compassion. Medicine can be very draining; there are many systemic barriers to providing care in a patient-centered, thoughtful, and kind way.” Many articulated how qualitative research participation helped them to dig deeper into patients’ and families’ stories, not just limited to clinical encounters in clinical spaces: “Seeing the stories, not just the patients. This work inherently teaches you about the value of the story.” One author explained that this sense of walking with patients and families helped foster patience: “I think [patience] comes from having more perspective into their narrative and giving them the benefit of the doubt because you have not just the hospital, clinical side – you have more insight into the other side of things.” Working group members emphasized how more complex understandings of patients’ and families’ lives generated deeper understanding and compassion, which they recognized as skills integral to provision of high-quality medical care in their future careers.

3.6. Unanticipated impact: Self-care and professional affirmation

Working group members identified various unexpected positive outcomes from participation in qualitative research, including how it influenced perceptions of self-care and professional affirmation. Witnessing the strength and wisdom of parents of children with serious illness and/or bereaved parents inspired many learners. One member explained that studying communication through qualitative research methods allowed her to be less harsh on herself in evaluating her own communication: “This experience has provided me with the space to allow myself grace when I know I could have completed an intervention in a different way.” Several also shared that the research experience has affirmed their decisions into go into healthcare professions:

“I remember sitting down and really listening to one of the conversations, and immediately, I was so filled with emotion that tears really filled my eyes, partly because of the emotion of the conversation but also because I had been longing for this viewpoint, as it addressed why I had become really passionate about nursing. It reignited my passion for nursing and healthcare.”

Another echoed this same idea, explaining that the work reinvigorated her medical studies: “Seeing how this life experience affects these parents each and every day really allowed me to see the gravity of the situation and gave me the motivation to continue on this journey towards becoming a doctor.”

An additional unexpected benefit of qualitative research participation was deconstruction of hierarchy in clinical medicine. The process through which team members from various roles and statuses came together to reach consensus in coding belied self-perceived hierarchical identities:

“I was surprised by the richness of diligence and detail involved in the work, including check mechanisms that produced consensus. I found the reconciliation process to be a perfect example of this. The meetings were equal parts presentation of fact and defense of personal standpoint that involved everyone as an equal partnered contributor.”

An author who participated in this research as an undergraduate emphasized the power of connection among team members that overrode the difference of education level or training experience: “We connected on raw emotion that we felt from the conversation – even though we may be at very different stages of life, we still felt the same responses to some scenarios.”

Working group members emphasized that qualitative research participation also helped them develop skills in teaching and mentoring, as well as influenced how they approached the development of communications training programs and curricula in the future. Finally, they explained that it inspired them to continue self-reflection on communication, driving them to develop their practices of life-long learning. Table 3 articulates both benefits in more detail. Alongside these positive benefits, working group members also identified unexpected challenges, acknowledging the emotional weight of accompanying families, bearing witness, and feeling responsible for empathetic and compassionate communication, detailed in Table 4 .

Benefits of qualitative research participation as educators and life-long learners.

Unexpected challenges of participation in qualitative research: the emotional weight of accompanying families, bearing witness, and feeling responsible for empathetic and compassionate communication.

4. Discussion and conclusion

4.1. discussion.

Clinician-researchers with immersive experience in qualitative research identified the value of research participation on gaining and sustaining important communication skills. Key lessons from the working group are summarized in Fig. 2 .

Key takeaway lessons from exploratory investigation of influences of participation in qualitative research on clinicians-in-training.

These findings raise the possibility that opportunities for participation in qualitative research alongside communication scientists may be an under-utilized resource for medical educators seeking to support trainees in developing important communication skills. Theories of experiential learning [ 26 , 27 ] and reflexive learning [ 28 , 29 ] underscore the potential educational benefit of qualitative research participation [ 30 ], in that they suggest that learning through doing and informally and formally reflecting on experiences may be more effective at conveying key lessons in clinical communication than didactics, small group discussions, or other instruction on the topic. We encourage medical educators and communication researchers to explore strategies for collaboration through engagement of undergraduate, graduate, medical, and post-graduate clinicians- and researchers-in-training. Rethinking the potential of qualitative research to improve clinical education may be bidirectionally beneficial, strengthening communication skills training while also reinforcing the value of qualitative research.

Further, these data preliminarily suggest that regular immersion in qualitative data may support resilience building for learners, and future research is needed to explore this potential. Listening to recordings or reading transcripts from clinical encounters offers trainees a unique opportunity to bear witness and experience diagnostic or prognostic communication, metaphorically standing alongside the patient and family, while still maintaining space to reflect, question, cry, otherwise respond, pause, discuss, and debrief the encounter. DIPEx International and other similar resources amalgamating qualitative research data can be incorporated into learning opportunities that enable more clinical trainees to conduct qualitative research.

The research team functions as a support group within which researchers can process the emotional weight and lessons learned from the encounter. This “practice run” prior to driving difficult conversations offers trainees the chance to develop communications skills and bolster both their approach and confidence prior to patient encounters [ 31 ]. Prior qualitative research experiences enable trainees to avoid feeling overwhelmed, hitting the ground running, prepared for the emotional burden and capable of listening, leaving room for silence, building empathy, and prioritizing compassion. Working group members felt prepared not only to practice skillful communication, but also to teach strategies.

Findings from the work should be interpreted in the context of limitations. Working group members all had participated in qualitative research previously and thus likely had a predisposition for engagement with and enthusiasm for communication research and qualitative methodology. It is possible that a different group of learners – perhaps those who tend toward a more positivist sensibility – may not find participation in qualitative research as useful for communication skills development. Additionally, not all QUEST working group members had an opportunity to participate in collective, generative dialogue to build upon ideas in real time. Several members participated by sharing their perspectives in writing, and although this allowed for enrichment of perspectives and experiences, it is not possible to know how additional interaction may have shaped the collective message.

Innovation: We offer two innovative approaches to healthcare professions education. First, we offer an innovative research methodology – an adaptation of autoethnography that involves collaboration among a group of people who share an experience (i.e., qualitative research participation), generate reflective data about that experience, and then work together to analyze those data. The methodology carried out by the collaborative working group to explore an a priori question related to our collective experiences is innovative, in that there was no division between “researchers” and “study participants” and thus the process was not traditional “research” but rather collaborative generation of knowledge. Inspired by autoethnographic methods, in which one person generates data from their own experiences, observations, and reflections and then analyzes those data, we have embarked upon a modified autoethnographic endeavor in which we collected data from ourselves as a working group made up of people with shared qualitative communication research participation experience and then analyzed and interpreted those data collectively. Different members of the working group participated in different ways to generate and analyze the data; we generated our own data and then studied our own experiences by analyzing the data. This methodology enables and may even empower health professions educators to study their own educational innovations.

Second, we offer a pedagogical innovation for health professions education, in which participation in qualitative research provides a learning experience for students in the health professions. We found that experience in qualitative research about communication facilitated learning about how to connect with patients and families, communicate clearly, and practice with empathy and compassion. Beyond the communication domain, additional applications of qualitative research experience as a learning opportunity might involve topics such as resilience, mindfulness, meaning-making, and self-reflection as tools to combat burnout or compassion fatigue.

With regards to application of findings, rethinking qualitative research participation as an underutilized educational opportunity is pedagogically innovative and should inspire medical education leaders to collaborate with communication researchers in engagement of undergraduate, graduate, medical, and post-graduate trainees. Collaborations between health professions educators and qualitative researchers could lead beyond communication, expanding to teaching about self-awareness, humility, active listening, quiet observation, and the critical importance of triangulating data to deepen information synthesis and interpretation. Rich opportunities exist to further probe how students immersed in qualitative research gain knowledge and skills. Further research also is needed to explore the benefits of partnerships between medical education and qualitative research teams in development of immersion-based communication learning.

4.2. Conclusion

Exposing clinical trainees to communication through participation in qualitative research has the potential to enhance self-perceived communication competency in three key domains: (1) Connection, (2) Clarity, and (3) Compassion, preparing them for future clinical encounters. Further, such exposure may have the potential to strengthen emotional intelligence and promote self-care, professional affirmation, and resilience.

Funding sources

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Credit author statement

Amy Porter: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draftWriting

Cameka Woods: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – review & editing.

Erica Kaye: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – original draft

All other authors: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Declaration of Competing Interest

Acknowledgements.

We thank working group members’ qualitative research mentors and collaborators for providing teaching and support throughout their qualitative research experiences.

Appendix A Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecinn.2022.100079 .

Contributor Information

Taylor aglio, jacob applegarth.

b Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Royal Oak, MI, USA (Jacob)

Tharwa Bilbeisi

c University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA

d Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, USA

Katie Greer

e University of California Davis Children’s Hospital, Sacramento, CA, USA

Rachel Huber

Ashley kiefer autrey.

f Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

Sarah Rockwell

g Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Marta Salek

Melanie stall.

h University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

Mariela Trejo

i University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

j University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, Memphis, TN, USA

Kristina Zalud

k St. Louis Children’s Hospital, St. Louis, MO, USA

Appendix A. Supplementary data

QUEST Working Group Discussion Guide

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Research Skills: What they are and Benefits

Research skills play a vital role in the success of any research project, enabling individuals to navigate the vast sea of information, analyze data critically, and draw meaningful conclusions. Whether conducting academic research, professional investigations, or personal inquiries, strong research skills are essential for obtaining accurate and reliable results.

LEARN ABOUT:   Research Process Steps

By understanding and developing these skills, individuals can embark on their research endeavors with confidence, integrity, and the capability to make meaningful contributions in their chosen fields. This article will explore the importance of research skills and discuss critical competencies necessary for conducting a research project effectively.

Content Index

What are Research Skills?

Important research skills for research project, benefits of research skills.

• Improving your Research Skills

Talk to Experts to Improve Skills

Research skills are the capability a person carries to create new concepts and understand the use of data collection. These skills include techniques, documentation, and interpretation of the collected data. Research is conducted to evaluate hypotheses and share the findings most appropriately. Research skills improve as we gain experience.

To conduct efficient research, specific research skills are essential. These skills are necessary for companies to develop new products and services or enhance existing products. To develop good research skills is important for both the individual as well as the company.

When undertaking a research project, one must possess specific important skills to ensure the project’s success and accuracy. Here are some essential research skills that are crucial for conducting a project effectively:

Time Management Skills:

Time management is an essential research skill; it helps you break down your project into parts and enables you to manage it easier. One can create a dead-line oriented plan for the research project and assign time for each task. Time management skills include setting goals for the project, planning and organizing functions as per their priority, and efficiently delegating these tasks.

Communication Skills:

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The ability to handle complex situations and business challenges and come up with solutions for them is termed problem-solving. To problem-solve, you should be able to fully understand the extent of the problem and then break it down into smaller parts. Once segregated into smaller chunks, you can start thinking about each element and analyze it to find a solution.

Information gathering and attention to detail:

Relevant information is the key to good research design . Searching for credible resources and collecting information from there will help you strengthen your research proposal and drive you to solutions faster. Once you have access to information, paying close attention to all the details and drawing conclusions based on the findings is essential.

Research Design and Methodology :

Understanding research design and methodology is essential for planning and conducting a project. Depending on the research question and objectives, researchers must select appropriate research methods, such as surveys, experiments, interviews, or case studies. Proficiency in designing research protocols, data collection instruments, and sampling strategies is crucial for obtaining reliable and valid results.

Data Collection and Analysis :

Researchers should be skilled in collecting and analyzing data accurately. It involves designing data collection instruments, collecting data through various methods, such as surveys or observations, and organizing and analyzing the collected data using appropriate statistical or qualitative analysis techniques. Proficiency in using software tools like SPSS, Excel, or qualitative analysis software can be beneficial.

By developing and strengthening these research skills, researchers can enhance the quality and impact of their research process, contributing to good research skills in their respective fields.

Research skills are invaluable assets that can benefit individuals in various aspects of their lives. Here are some key benefits of developing and honing research skills:

Boosts Curiosity :

Curiosity is a strong desire to know things and a powerful learning driver. Curious researchers will naturally ask questions that demand answers and will stop in the search for answers. Interested people are better listeners and are open to listening to other people’s ideas and perspectives, not just their own.

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As well as being aware of other people’s subjective opinions, one must develop the importance of research skills and be mindful of the benefits of awareness research; we are exposed to many things while researching. Once we start doing research, the benefit from it reflects on the beliefs and attitudes and encourages them to open their minds to other perspectives and ways of looking at things.

Effective Communication:

Research skills contribute to practical communication skills by enhancing one’s ability to articulate ideas, opinions, and findings clearly and coherently. Through research, individuals learn to organize their thoughts, present evidence-based arguments, and effectively convey complex information to different audiences. These skills are crucial in academic research settings, professional environments, and personal interactions.

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Developing research skills fosters personal and professional growth by instilling a sense of curiosity, intellectual independence, and a lifelong learning mindset. Research encourages individuals to seek knowledge, challenge assumptions, and embrace intellectual growth. These skills also enhance adaptability as individuals become adept at navigating and assimilating new information, staying updated with the latest developments, and adjusting their perspectives and strategies accordingly.

Academic Success:

Research skills are essential for academic research success. They enable students to conduct thorough literature reviews, gather evidence to support their arguments, and critically evaluate existing research. By honing their research skills, students can produce well-structured, evidence-based essays, projects, and dissertations demonstrating high academic research rigor and analytical thinking.

Professional Advancement:

Research skills are highly valued in the professional world. They are crucial for conducting market research, analyzing trends, identifying opportunities, and making data-driven decisions. Employers appreciate individuals who can effectively gather and analyze information, solve complex problems, and provide evidence-based recommendations. Research skills also enable professionals to stay updated with advancements in their field, positioning themselves as knowledgeable and competent experts.

Developing and nurturing research skills can significantly benefit individuals in numerous aspects of their lives, enabling them to thrive in an increasingly information-driven world.

Improving Your Research Skills

There are many things you can do to improve your research skills and utilize them in your research or day job. Here are some examples:

• Develop Information Literacy: Strengthening your information literacy skills is crucial for conducting thorough research. It involves identifying reliable sources, evaluating the credibility of information, and navigating different research databases.
• Enhance Critical Thinking: Critical thinking is an essential skill for effective research. It involves analyzing information, questioning assumptions, and evaluating arguments. Practice critical analysis by analyzing thoughtfully, identifying biases, and considering alternative perspectives.
• Master Research Methodologies: Familiarize yourself with different research methodologies relevant to your field. Whether it’s qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods research, realizing the strengths and limitations of each approach is crucial.
• Practice Effective Time Management: Research requires dedicated time and effort. Develop good time management skills to ensure that you allocate sufficient time for each stage of the research process, including planning, data collection, analysis, and writing.
• Embrace Collaboration: Collaborating with peers and colleagues can provide a fresh perspective and enrich your research experience. Engage in discussions, share ideas, and seek feedback from others. Collaborative projects allow for exchanging knowledge and skills.
• Continuously Update Your Knowledge: Stay informed about your field’s latest developments and advancements. Regularly read scholarly articles, attend conferences, and follow reputable sources of information to stay up to date with current research trends.

There is plenty of information available on the internet about every topic; hence, learning skills to know which information is relevant and credible is very important. Today most search engines have the feature of advanced search, and you can customize the search as per your preference. Once you learn this skill, it will help you find information. 

Experts possess a wealth of knowledge, experience, and insights that can significantly enhance your understanding and abilities in conducting research. Experts have often encountered numerous challenges and hurdles throughout their research journey and have developed effective problem-solving techniques. Engaging with experts is a highly effective approach to improving research skills.

Moreover, experts can provide valuable feedback and constructive criticism on your research work. They can offer fresh perspectives, identify areas for improvement, and help you refine your research questions, methodology, and analysis.

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Research skills are invaluable assets that empower individuals to navigate the ever-expanding realm of information, make informed decisions, and contribute to advancing knowledge. With advanced research tools and technologies like QuestionPro Survey Software, researchers have potent resources to conduct comprehensive surveys, gather data, and analyze results efficiently.

Where data-driven decision-making is crucial, research skills supported by advanced tools like QuestionPro are essential for researchers to stay ahead and make impactful contributions to their fields. By embracing these research skills and leveraging the capabilities of powerful survey software, researchers can unlock new possibilities, gain deeper insights, and pave the way for meaningful discoveries.

Authors : Gargi Ghamandi & Sandeep Kokane

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Communication Research

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• Description
• Aims and Scope
• Editorial Board
• Abstracting / Indexing
• Submission Guidelines

For over three decades researchers and practitioners have depended on Communication Research for the most up-to-date, comprehensive and important research on communication and its related fields.

Important, In-Depth Research and Scholarship Communication processes are a fundamental part of virtually every aspect of human social life. Communication Research publishes articles that explore the processes, antecedents, and consequences of communication in a broad range of societal systems. Although most of the published articles are empirical, we also consider overview/review articles. These include the following:

• interpersonal
• entertainment
• advertising/persuasive communication
• new technology, online, computer-mediated and mobile communication 
• organizational
• intercultural

Why you need Communication Research

• Research and theory presented in all areas of communication give you comprehensive coverage of the field
• Rigorous, empirical analysis provides you with research that’s reliable and high in quality
• The multi-disciplinary perspective contributes to a greater understanding of communication processes and outcomes
• "Themed issues" bring you in-depth examinations of a specific area of importance, as thematically connected articles selected in the standard peer-review process are conveniently presented in a single issue
• Expert editorial guidance represents a wide range of interests from inside and outside the traditional boundaries of the communication discipline

Empirical research in communication began in the 20th century, and there are more researchers pursuing answers to communication questions today than at any other time. The editorial goal of Communication Research is to offer a special opportunity for reflection and change in the new millennium. To qualify for publication, research should, first, be explicitly tied to some form of communication; second, be theoretically driven with conclusions that inform theory; third, use the most rigorous empirical methods OR provide a review of a research area; and fourth, be directly linked to the most important problems and issues facing humankind. Criteria do not privilege any particular context; indeed, we believe that the key problems facing humankind occur in close relationships, groups, organizations, and cultures. Hence, we hope to publish research conducted across a wide variety of levels and units of analysis.

• Academic Search - Premier
• Academic Search Elite
• Business Source Premier
• CRN: Business & Industry
• Clarivate Analytics: Current Contents - Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences
• Clarivate Analytics: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
• ComAbstracts
• CommSearch - Ebsco
• CommSearch Full Text - Ebsco
• Corporate ResourceNET - Ebsco
• Current Citations Express
• EBSCO: Business Source - Main Edition
• EBSCO: Business Source Elite
• EBSCO: Communication Abstracts
• EBSCO: Human Resources Abstracts
• EBSCO: Humanities International Complete
• EBSCO: Political Science Complete
• EBSCO: Violence & Abuse Abstracts
• ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
• ERIC Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE)
• EServer.org
• Family & Society Studies Worldwide (NISC)
• Family Index Database
• Film Literature Index
• Gale: Diversity Studies Collection
• Humanities Source
• ISI Basic Social Sciences Index
• MLA International Bibliography
• MasterFILE - Ebsco
• OmniFile: Full Text Mega Edition (H.W. Wilson)
• Political Science Abstracts
• ProQuest: Applied Social Science Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)
• ProQuest: CSA Sociological Abstracts
• ProQuest: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
• ProQuest: Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
• Psychological Abstracts
• Social SciSearch
• Social Science Source
• Social Sciences Index Full Text
• Social Services Abstracts
• Standard Periodical Directory (SPD)
• TOPICsearch - Ebsco
• Translation Studies Abstracts/Bibliography of Translation Studies
• Wilson Social Sciences Index Retrospective

Manuscripts for consideration in Communication Research should be submitted electronically via Manuscript Central ( http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/commresearch ). Authors will be required to set up an online account in the SageTRACK system at this site. For general inquiries, please contact the Communication Research editorial office (email [email protected] ).

The co-editors and editorial board make every effort to review manuscripts thoroughly and promptly. One of the co-editors initially determines whether the content of the manuscript is appropriate for the journal and whether there is sufficient publication potential to proceed with anonymous reviews. Manuscripts that do not pass this initial screening are returned immediately. If a manuscript is sent out for the review process it is typically completed in eight to ten weeks. Authors are encouraged to obtain and incorporate editorial advice of their colleagues prior to submitting their work to Communication Research .

Submissions should consist of a cover file and separate manuscript file.

The cover file should include:

• The manuscript title.
• Author(s), affiliation, contact information, and e-mail address.
• Any acknowledgments.
• Author biographies (100 words maximum for all authors).

The manuscript file should:

• Include an abstract of no more than 150 words.
• List 4 to 5 keywords.
• Be de-identified: It is important that authors’ names do not appear anywhere other than on the cover file (if questions arise in specific circumstances, when de-identification might be more revealing than including the authors’ names, please contact the editorial office).
• Be submitted as MS Word files (Windows Vista users, please save files down to the pre-2007, “.doc” versions).
• Be prepared in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , 7th edition.
• In particular, the entire manuscript should be double spaced, and manuscripts should have 1 inch margins on all four sides.
• References should be carefully edited to ensure consistency with APA guidelines and include DOI numbers.
• Statistics and statistical analyses should be reported in line with APA guidelines including standard deviations and effect sizes when applicable.  Confidence intervals must be reported when bootstrapping is utilized.  Further, inclusion of correlation matrices as online appendix is strongly recommended (as this information facilitates meta-analyses).
• Figures and tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript file and numbered in the order they appear in text. Tables should be editable, formatted in line with APA guidelines, and have a clear title.
• An in-text callout (example: “[Figure 1 here]”) should be inserted on a separate line just after the paragraph where each figure or table appears.
• All figures should be submitted in the original program in which they were created (JPG, TIFF, or EPS; Microsoft Application Files are acceptable for line art).
• Any scanned images should be set at 1200 dpi for line art and 300 dpi for color or grayscale.
• Appendices should be used sparingly and should be lettered to set them apart from numbered tables/figures.
• Online appendices can now be used and do not count towards the 12,800 word count limit. They are hosted on the Communication Research site and linked to the article metadata and viewable in the TOC and article page itself. Upon submission, authors can denote appendices as "Online Appendix" and otherwise simply include them in the submission files, while following APA guidance for appendices.
• It is recommended that the paper is below 12,800 words in length; authors may provide supplementary materials to be published later as online appendices

Previously copyrighted material:

• Authors are responsible for gaining permission to reproduce any copyrighted material in their submissions, including images and quotations of more than 300 words.
• If another manuscript drawing on the same dataset has been submitted or published previously, please explain how it differs from this manuscript in your cover letter.
• Permission in email format is acceptable.
• Authors may also submit a Copyright Permission Request Form completed by the copyright holder.
• Payment of any fees the copyright holder may request is the author’s responsibility.
• Because obtaining reprint permission can be time consuming, it is recommended that authors begin this process as soon as possible.

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in the journal:

• Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal should not simultaneously submit them to another journal.
• Authors should not submit manuscripts that have been published elsewhere in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content.
• Authors in doubt about what constitutes prior publication should consult the Communication Research editorial office (email [email protected] ).

Language editing support:

• Authors who want to refine the use of English in their manuscripts might consider utilizing the services of SPi, a non-affiliated company that offers Professional Editing Services to authors of journal articles in the areas of science, technology, medicine or the social sciences.
• SPi specializes in editing and correcting English-language manuscripts written by authors with a primary language other than English.
• Visit http://www.prof-editing.com for more information about SPi’s Professional Editing Services, pricing, and turn-around times, or to obtain a free quote or submit a manuscript for language polishing. Please be aware that Sage has no affiliation with SPi and makes no endorsement of the company.
• An author’s use of SPi’s services in no way guarantees that his or her submission will ultimately be accepted.
• Any arrangement an author enters into will be exclusively between the author and SPi, and any costs incurred are the sole responsibility of the author.

Open Science Badges:

Articles submitted to Communication Research and accepted for publication after 7/1/2019 are eligible to earn badges that recognize open scientific practices: publicly available data, material, or preregistered research plans. You can also find information on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki/home/

To apply for one or more badges acknowledging open practices, please check the box(es) corresponding to the desired badge(s) in the online submission form and provide the information requested in the relevant sections. To qualify for a badge, you must provide a URL, doi, or other permanent path for accessing the specified information in a public, open-access repository. Qualifying public, open-access repositories are committed to preserving data, materials, and/or registered analysis plans and keeping them publicly accessible via the web in perpetuity. Examples include the Open Science Framework ( OSF ) and the various Dataverse networks. Hundreds of other qualifying data/materials repositories are listed at http://re3data.org/ . Preregistration of an analysis plan must take place via a publicly accessible registry system (e.g., OSF , ClinicalTrials.gov or other trial registries in the WHO Registry Network , institutional registration systems). Personal websites and most departmental websites do not qualify as repositories.

Authors who wish to publicly post third-party material in their data, materials, or preregistration plan must have the proper authority or permission agreement in order to do so.

There are circumstances in which it is not possible or advisable to share any or all data, materials, or a research plan publicly. For example, there are cases in which sharing participants’ data could violate confidentiality. If you would like your article to include an explanation of such circumstances and/or provide links to any data or materials you have made available—even if not under conditions eligible to earn a badge—you may write an alternative note that will be published in a note in the article.

If you or your funder wish your article to be freely available online to nonsubscribers immediately upon publication (gold open access), you can opt for it to be included in Sage Choice, subject to the payment of a publication fee. The manuscript submission and peer review procedure is unchanged. On acceptance of your article, you will be asked to let Sage know directly if you are choosing Sage Choice. To check journal eligibility and the publication fee, please visit Sage Choice . For more information on open access options and compliance at Sage, including self/author archiving deposits (green open access) visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID . ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

For more information, please refer to the Sage Manuscript Submission Guidelines .

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Guide to Communication Research Methodologies: Quantitative, Qualitative and Rhetorical Research

Overview of Communication

Communication research methods, quantitative research, qualitative research, rhetorical research, mixed methodology.

Students interested in earning a graduate degree in communication should have at least some interest in understanding communication theories and/or conducting communication research. As students advance from undergraduate to graduate programs, an interesting change takes place — the student is no longer just a repository for knowledge. Rather, the student is expected to learn while also creating knowledge. This new knowledge is largely generated through the development and completion of research in communication studies. Before exploring the different methodologies used to conduct communication research, it is important to have a foundational understanding of the field of communication.

Defining communication is much harder than it sounds. Indeed, scholars have argued about the topic for years, typically differing on the following topics:

• Breadth : How many behaviors and actions should or should not be considered communication.
• Intentionality : Whether the definition includes an intention to communicate.
• Success : Whether someone was able to effectively communicate a message, or merely attempted to without it being received or understood.

However, most definitions discuss five main components, which include: sender, receiver, context/environment, medium, and message. Broadly speaking, communication research examines these components, asking questions about each of them and seeking to answer those questions.

As students seek to answer their own questions, they follow an approach similar to most other researchers. This approach proceeds in five steps: conceptualize, plan and design, implement a methodology, analyze and interpret, reconceptualize.

• Conceptualize : In the conceptualization process, students develop their area of interest and determine if their specific questions and hypotheses are worth investigating. If the research has already been completed, or there is no practical reason to research the topic, students may need to find a different research topic.
• Plan and Design : During planning and design students will select their methods of evaluation and decide how they plan to define their variables in a measurable way.
• Implement a Methodology : When implementing a methodology, students collect the data and information they require. They may, for example, have decided to conduct a survey study. This is the step when they would use their survey to collect data. If students chose to conduct a rhetorical criticism, this is when they would analyze their text.
• Analyze and Interpret : As students analyze and interpret their data or evidence, they transform the raw findings into meaningful insights. If they chose to conduct interviews, this would be the point in the process where they would evaluate the results of the interviews to find meaning as it relates to the communication phenomena of interest.
• Reconceptualize : During reconceptualization, students ask how their findings speak to a larger body of research — studies related to theirs that have already been completed and research they should execute in the future to continue answering new questions.

This final step is crucial, and speaks to an important tenet of communication research: All research contributes to a better overall understanding of communication and moves the field forward by enabling the development of new theories.

In the field of communication, there are three main research methodologies: quantitative, qualitative, and rhetorical. As communication students progress in their careers, they will likely find themselves using one of these far more often than the others.

Quantitative research seeks to establish knowledge through the use of numbers and measurement. Within the overarching area of quantitative research, there are a variety of different methodologies. The most commonly used methodologies are experiments, surveys, content analysis, and meta-analysis. To better understand these research methods, you can explore the following examples:

Experiments : Experiments are an empirical form of research that enable the researcher to study communication in a controlled environment. For example, a researcher might know that there are typical responses people use when they are interrupted during a conversation. However, it might be unknown as to how frequency of interruption provokes those different responses (e.g., do communicators use different responses when interrupted once every 10 minutes versus once per minute?). An experiment would allow a researcher to create these two environments to test a hypothesis or answer a specific research question. As you can imagine, it would be very time consuming — and probably impossible — to view this and measure it in the real world. For that reason, an experiment would be perfect for this research inquiry.

Surveys : Surveys are often used to collect information from large groups of people using scales that have been tested for validity and reliability. A researcher might be curious about how a supervisor sharing personal information with his or her subordinate affects way the subordinate perceives his or her supervisor. The researcher could create a survey where respondents answer questions about a) the information their supervisors self-disclose and b) their perceptions of their supervisors. The data collected about these two variables could offer interesting insights about this communication. As you would guess, an experiment would not work in this case because the researcher needs to assess a real relationship and they need insight into the mind of the respondent.

Content Analysis : Content analysis is used to count the number of occurrences of a phenomenon within a source of media (e.g., books, magazines, commercials, movies, etc.). For example, a researcher might be interested in finding out if people of certain races are underrepresented on television. They might explore this area of research by counting the number of times people of different races appear in prime time television and comparing that to the actual proportions in society.

Meta-Analysis : In this technique, a researcher takes a collection of quantitative studies and analyzes the data as a whole to get a better understanding of a communication phenomenon. For example, a researcher might be curious about how video games affect aggression. This researcher might find that many studies have been done on the topic, sometimes with conflicting results. In their meta-analysis, they could analyze the existing statistics as a whole to get a better understanding of the relationship between the two variables.

Qualitative research is interested in exploring subjects’ perceptions and understandings as they relate to communication. Imagine two researchers who want to understand student perceptions of the basic communication course at a university. The first researcher, a quantitative researcher, might measure absences to understand student perception. The second researcher, a qualitative researcher, might interview students to find out what they like and dislike about a course. The former is based on hard numbers, while the latter is based on human experience and perception.

Qualitative researchers employ a variety of different methodologies. Some of the most popular are interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. To better understand these research methods, you can explore the following examples:

Interviews : This typically consists of a researcher having a discussion with a participant based on questions developed by the researcher. For example, a researcher might be interested in how parents exert power over the lives of their children while the children are away at college. The researcher could spend time having conversations with college students about this topic, transcribe the conversations and then seek to find themes across the different discussions.

Focus Groups : A researcher using this method gathers a group of people with intimate knowledge of a communication phenomenon. For example, if a researcher wanted to understand the experience of couples who are childless by choice, he or she might choose to run a series of focus groups. This format is helpful because it allows participants to build on one another’s experiences, remembering information they may otherwise have forgotten. Focus groups also tend to produce useful information at a higher rate than interviews. That said, some issues are too sensitive for focus groups and lend themselves better to interviews.

Participant Observation : As the name indicates, this method involves the researcher watching participants in their natural environment. In some cases, the participants may not know they are being studied, as the researcher fully immerses his or herself as a member of the environment. To illustrate participant observation, imagine a researcher curious about how humor is used in healthcare. This researcher might immerse his or herself in a long-term care facility to observe how humor is used by healthcare workers interacting with patients.

Rhetorical research (or rhetorical criticism) is a form of textual analysis wherein the researcher systematically analyzes, interprets, and critiques the persuasive power of messages within a text. This takes on many forms, but all of them involve similar steps: selecting a text, choosing a rhetorical method, analyzing the text, and writing the criticism.

To illustrate, a researcher could be interested in how mass media portrays “good degrees” to prospective college students. To understand this communication, a rhetorical researcher could take 30 articles on the topic from the last year and write a rhetorical essay about the criteria used and the core message argued by the media.

Likewise, a researcher could be interested in how women in management roles are portrayed in television. They could select a group of popular shows and analyze that as the text. This might result in a rhetorical essay about the behaviors displayed by these women and what the text says about women in management roles.

As a final example, one might be interested in how persuasion is used by the president during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. A researcher could select several recent presidents and write a rhetorical essay about their speeches and how they employed persuasion during their delivery.

Taking a mixed methods approach results in a research study that uses two or more techniques discussed above. Often, researchers will pair two methods together in the same study examining the same phenomenon. Other times, researchers will use qualitative methods to develop quantitative research, such as a researcher who uses a focus group to discuss the validity of a survey before it is finalized.

The benefit of mixed methods is that it offers a richer picture of a communication phenomenon by gathering data and information in multiple ways. If we explore some of the earlier examples, we can see how mixed methods might result in a better understanding of the communication being studied.

Example 1 : In surveys, we discussed a researcher interested in understanding how a supervisor sharing personal information with his or her subordinate affects the way the subordinate perceives his or her supervisor. While a survey could give us some insight into this communication, we could also add interviews with subordinates. Exploring their experiences intimately could give us a better understanding of how they navigate self-disclosure in a relationship based on power differences.

Example 2 : In content analysis, we discussed measuring representation of different races during prime time television. While we can count the appearances of members of different races and compare that to the composition of the general population, that doesn’t tell us anything about their portrayal. Adding rhetorical criticism, we could talk about how underrepresented groups are portrayed in either a positive or negative light, supporting or defying commonly held stereotypes.

Example 3 : In interviews, we saw a researcher who explored how power could be exerted by parents over their college-age children who are away at school. After determining the tactics used by parents, this interview study could have a phase two. In this phase, the researcher could develop scales to measure each tactic and then use those scales to understand how the tactics affect other communication constructs. One could argue, for example, that student anxiety would increase as a parent exerts greater power over that student. A researcher could conduct a hierarchical regression to see how each power tactic effects the levels of stress experienced by a student.

As you can see, each methodology has its own merits, and they often work well together. As students advance in their study of communication, it is worthwhile to learn various research methods. This allows them to study their interests in greater depth and breadth. Ultimately, they will be able to assemble stronger research studies and answer their questions about communication more effectively.

Note : For more information about research in the field of communication, check out our Guide to Communication Research and Scholarship .

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The Most Important Research Skills (With Examples)

• What Are Hard Skills?
• What Are Technical Skills?
• What Are What Are Life Skills?
• What Are Social Media Skills Resume?
• What Are Administrative Skills?
• What Are Analytical Skills?
• What Are Research Skills?
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• What Are Microsoft Office Skills?
• What Are Clerical Skills?
• What Are Computer Skills?
• What Are Core Competencies?
• What Are Collaboration Skills?
• What Are Conflict Resolution Skills?
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• How To Delegate

Find a Job You Really Want In

Research skills are the ability to find out accurate information on a topic. They include being able to determine the data you need, find and interpret those findings, and then explain that to others. Being able to do effective research is a beneficial skill in any profession, as data and research inform how businesses operate.

Whether you’re unsure of your research skills or are looking for ways to further improve them, then this article will cover important research skills and how to become even better at research.

Key Takeaways

Having strong research skills can help you understand your competitors, develop new processes, and build your professional skills in addition to aiding you in finding new customers and saving your company money.

Some of the most valuable research skills you can have include goal setting, data collection, and analyzing information from multiple sources.

You can and should put your research skills on your resume and highlight them in your job interviews.

What are research skills?

Why are research skills important, 12 of the most important research skills, how to improve your research skills, highlighting your research skills in a job interview, how to include research skills on your resume, resume examples showcasing research skills, research skills faqs.

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Research skills are the necessary tools to be able to find, compile, and interpret information in order to answer a question. Of course, there are several aspects to this. Researchers typically have to decide how to go about researching a problem — which for most people is internet research.

In addition, you need to be able to interpret the reliability of a source, put the information you find together in an organized and logical way, and be able to present your findings to others. That means that they’re comprised of both hard skills — knowing your subject and what’s true and what isn’t — and soft skills. You need to be able to interpret sources and communicate clearly.

Research skills are useful in any industry, and have applications in innovation, product development, competitor research, and many other areas. In addition, the skills used in researching aren’t only useful for research. Being able to interpret information is a necessary skill, as is being able to clearly explain your reasoning.

Research skills are used to:

Do competitor research. Knowing what your biggest competitors are up to is an essential part of any business. Researching what works for your competitors, what they’re doing better than you, and where you can improve your standing with the lowest resource expenditure are all essential if a company wants to remain functional.

Develop new processes and products. You don’t have to be involved in research and development to make improvements in how your team gets things done. Researching new processes that make your job (and those of your team) more efficient will be valued by any sensible employer.

Foster self-improvement. Folks who have a knack and passion for research are never content with doing things the same way they’ve always been done. Organizations need independent thinkers who will seek out their own answers and improve their skills as a matter of course. These employees will also pick up new technologies more easily.

Manage customer relationships. Being able to conduct research on your customer base is positively vital in virtually every industry. It’s hard to move products or sell services if you don’t know what people are interested in. Researching your customer base’s interests, needs, and pain points is a valuable responsibility.

Save money. Whether your company is launching a new product or just looking for ways to scale back its current spending, research is crucial for finding wasted resources and redirecting them to more deserving ends. Anyone who proactively researches ways that the company can save money will be highly appreciated by their employer.

Solve problems. Problem solving is a major part of a lot of careers, and research skills are instrumental in making sure your solution is effective. Finding out the cause of the problem and determining an effective solution both require accurate information, and research is the best way to obtain that — be it via the internet or by observation.

Determine reliable information. Being able to tell whether or not the information you receive seems accurate is a very valuable skill. While research skills won’t always guarantee that you’ll be able to tell the reliability of the information at first glance, it’ll prevent you from being too trusting. And it’ll give the tools to double-check .

Experienced researchers know that worthwhile investigation involves a variety of skills. Consider which research skills come naturally to you, and which you could work on more.

Data collection . When thinking about the research process, data collection is often the first thing that comes to mind. It is the nuts and bolts of research. How data is collected can be flexible.

For some purposes, simply gathering facts and information on the internet can fulfill your need. Others may require more direct and crowd-sourced research. Having experience in various methods of data collection can make your resume more impressive to recruiters.

Data collection methods include: Observation Interviews Questionnaires Experimentation Conducting focus groups

Analysis of information from different sources. Putting all your eggs in one source basket usually results in error and disappointment. One of the skills that good researchers always incorporate into their process is an abundance of sources. It’s also best practice to consider the reliability of these sources.

Are you reading about U.S. history on a conspiracy theorist’s blog post? Taking facts for a presentation from an anonymous Twitter account?

If you can’t determine the validity of the sources you’re using, it can compromise all of your research. That doesn’t mean just disregard anything on the internet but double-check your findings. In fact, quadruple-check. You can make your research even stronger by turning to references outside of the internet.

Examples of reliable information sources include: Published books Encyclopedias Magazines Databases Scholarly journals Newspapers Library catalogs

Finding information on the internet. While it can be beneficial to consulate alternative sources, strong internet research skills drive modern-day research.

One of the great things about the internet is how much information it contains, however, this comes with digging through a lot of garbage to get to the facts you need. The ability to efficiently use the vast database of knowledge that is on the internet without getting lost in the junk is very valuable to employers.

Internet research skills include: Source checking Searching relevant questions Exploring deeper than the first options Avoiding distraction Giving credit Organizing findings

Interviewing. Some research endeavors may require a more hands-on approach than just consulting internet sources. Being prepared with strong interviewing skills can be very helpful in the research process.

Interviews can be a useful research tactic to gain first-hand information and being able to manage a successful interview can greatly improve your research skills.

Interviewing skills involves: A plan of action Specific, pointed questions Respectfulness Considering the interview setting Actively Listening Taking notes Gratitude for participation

Report writing. Possessing skills in report writing can assist you in job and scholarly research. The overall purpose of a report in any context is to convey particular information to its audience.

Effective report writing is largely dependent on communication. Your boss, professor , or general reader should walk away completely understanding your findings and conclusions.

Report writing skills involve: Proper format Including a summary Focusing on your initial goal Creating an outline Proofreading Directness

Critical thinking. Critical thinking skills can aid you greatly throughout the research process, and as an employee in general. Critical thinking refers to your data analysis skills. When you’re in the throes of research, you need to be able to analyze your results and make logical decisions about your findings.

Critical thinking skills involve: Observation Analysis Assessing issues Problem-solving Creativity Communication

Planning and scheduling. Research is a work project like any other, and that means it requires a little forethought before starting. Creating a detailed outline map for the points you want to touch on in your research produces more organized results.

It also makes it much easier to manage your time. Planning and scheduling skills are important to employers because they indicate a prepared employee.

Planning and scheduling skills include: Setting objectives Identifying tasks Prioritizing Delegating if needed Vision Communication Clarity Time-management

Note-taking. Research involves sifting through and taking in lots of information. Taking exhaustive notes ensures that you will not neglect any findings later and allows you to communicate these results to your co-workers. Being able to take good notes helps summarize research.

Examples of note-taking skills include: Focus Organization Using short-hand Keeping your objective in mind Neatness Highlighting important points Reviewing notes afterward

Communication skills. Effective research requires being able to understand and process the information you receive, either written or spoken. That means that you need strong reading comprehension and writing skills — two major aspects of communication — as well as excellent listening skills.

Most research also involves showcasing your findings. This can be via a presentation. , report, chart, or Q&A. Whatever the case, you need to be able to communicate your findings in a way that educates your audience.

Communication skills include: Reading comprehension Writing Listening skills Presenting to an audience Creating graphs or charts Explaining in layman’s terms

Time management. We’re, unfortunately, only given 24 measly hours in a day. The ability to effectively manage this time is extremely powerful in a professional context. Hiring managers seek candidates who can accomplish goals in a given timeframe.

Strong time management skills mean that you can organize a plan for how to break down larger tasks in a project and complete them by a deadline. Developing your time management skills can greatly improve the productivity of your research.

Time management skills include: Scheduling Creating task outlines Strategic thinking Stress-management Delegation Communication Utilizing resources Setting realistic expectations Meeting deadlines

Using your network. While this doesn’t seem immediately relevant to research skills, remember that there are a lot of experts out there. Knowing what people’s areas of expertise and asking for help can be tremendously beneficial — especially if it’s a subject you’re unfamiliar with.

Your coworkers are going to have different areas of expertise than you do, and your network of people will as well. You may even know someone who knows someone who’s knowledgeable in the area you’re researching. Most people are happy to share their expertise, as it’s usually also an area of interest to them.

Networking involves: Remembering people’s areas of expertise Being willing to ask for help Communication Returning favors Making use of advice Asking for specific assistance

Attention to detail. Research is inherently precise. That means that you need to be attentive to the details, both in terms of the information you’re gathering, but also in where you got it from. Making errors in statistics can have a major impact on the interpretation of the data, not to mention that it’ll reflect poorly on you.

There are proper procedures for citing sources that you should follow. That means that your sources will be properly credited, preventing accusations of plagiarism. In addition, it means that others can make use of your research by returning to the original sources.

Attention to detail includes: Double checking statistics Taking notes Keeping track of your sources Staying organized Making sure graphs are accurate and representative Properly citing sources

As with many professional skills, research skills serve us in our day to day life. Any time you search for information on the internet, you’re doing research. That means that you’re practicing it outside of work as well. If you want to continue improving your research skills, both for professional and personal use, here are some tips to try.

Differentiate between source quality. A researcher is only as good as their worst source. Start paying attention to the quality of the sources you use, and be suspicious of everything your read until you check out the attributions and works cited.

Be critical and ask yourself about the author’s bias, where the author’s research aligns with the larger body of verified research in the field, and what publication sponsored or published the research.

Use multiple resources. When you can verify information from a multitude of sources, it becomes more and more credible. To bolster your faith in one source, see if you can find another source that agrees with it.

Don’t fall victim to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when a researcher expects a certain outcome and then goes to find data that supports this hypothesis. It can even go so far as disregarding anything that challenges the researcher’s initial hunch. Be prepared for surprising answers and keep an open mind.

Be open to the idea that you might not find a definitive answer. It’s best to be honest and say that you found no definitive answer instead of just confirming what you think your boss or coworkers expect or want to hear. Experts and good researchers are willing to say that they don’t know.

Stay organized. Being able to cite sources accurately and present all your findings is just as important as conducting the research itself. Start practicing good organizational skills , both on your devices and for any physical products you’re using.

Get specific as you go. There’s nothing wrong with starting your research in a general way. After all, it’s important to become familiar with the terminology and basic gist of the researcher’s findings before you dig down into all the minutia.

A job interview is itself a test of your research skills. You can expect questions on what you know about the company, the role, and your field or industry more generally. In order to give expert answers on all these topics, research is crucial.

Start by researching the company . Look into how they communicate with the public through social media, what their mission statement is, and how they describe their culture.

Pay close attention to the tone of their website. Is it hyper professional or more casual and fun-loving? All of these elements will help decide how best to sell yourself at the interview.

Next, research the role. Go beyond the job description and reach out to current employees working at your desired company and in your potential department. If you can find out what specific problems your future team is or will be facing, you’re sure to impress hiring managers and recruiters with your ability to research all the facts.

Finally, take time to research the job responsibilities you’re not as comfortable with. If you’re applying for a job that represents increased difficulty or entirely new tasks, it helps to come into the interview with at least a basic knowledge of what you’ll need to learn.

Research projects require dedication. Being committed is a valuable skill for hiring managers. Whether you’ve had research experience throughout education or a former job, including it properly can boost the success of your resume .

Consider how extensive your research background is. If you’ve worked on multiple, in-depth research projects, it might be best to include it as its own section. If you have less research experience, include it in the skills section .

Focus on your specific role in the research, as opposed to just the research itself. Try to quantify accomplishments to the best of your abilities. If you were put in charge of competitor research, for example, list that as one of the tasks you had in your career.

If it was a particular project, such as tracking the sale of women’s clothing at a tee-shirt company, you can say that you “directed analysis into women’s clothing sales statistics for a market research project.”

Ascertain how directly research skills relate to the job you’re applying for. How strongly you highlight your research skills should depend on the nature of the job the resume is for. If research looks to be a strong component of it, then showcase all of your experience.

If research looks to be tangential, then be sure to mention it — it’s a valuable skill — but don’t put it front and center.

Example #1: Academic Research

Simon Marks 767 Brighton Blvd. | Brooklyn, NY, 27368 | (683)-262-8883 | [email protected] Diligent and hardworking recent graduate seeking a position to develop professional experience and utilize research skills. B.A. in Biological Sciences from New York University. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Lixus Publishing , Brooklyn, NY Office Assistant- September 2018-present Scheduling and updating meetings Managing emails and phone calls Reading entries Worked on a science fiction campaign by researching target demographic Organizing calendars Promoted to office assistant after one year internship Mitch’s Burgers and Fries , Brooklyn, NY Restaurant Manager , June 2014-June 2018 Managed a team of five employees Responsible for coordinating the weekly schedule Hired and trained two employees Kept track of inventory Dealt with vendors Provided customer service Promoted to restaurant manager after two years as a waiter Awarded a $2.00/hr wage increase SKILLS Writing Scientific Research Data analysis Critical thinking Planning Communication RESEARCH Worked on an ecosystem biology project with responsibilities for algae collection and research (2019) Lead a group of freshmen in a research project looking into cell biology (2018) EDUCATION New York University Bachelors in Biological Sciences, September 2016-May 2020

Example #2: Professional Research

Angela Nichols 1111 Keller Dr. | San Francisco, CA | (663)-124-8827 |[email protected] Experienced and enthusiastic marketer with 7 years of professional experience. Seeking a position to apply my marketing and research knowledge. Skills in working on a team and flexibility. EXPERIENCE Apples amp; Oranges Marketing, San Francisco, CA Associate Marketer – April 2017-May 2020 Discuss marketing goals with clients Provide customer service Lead campaigns associated with women’s health Coordinating with a marketing team Quickly solving issues in service and managing conflict Awarded with two raises totaling $10,000 over three years Prestigious Marketing Company, San Francisco, CA Marketer – May 2014-April 2017 Working directly with clients Conducting market research into television streaming preferences Developing marketing campaigns related to television streaming services Report writing Analyzing campaign success statistics Promoted to Marketer from Junior Marketer after the first year Timberlake Public Relations, San Francisco, CA Public Relations Intern – September 2013–May 2014 Working cohesively with a large group of co-workers and supervisors Note-taking during meetings Running errands Managing email accounts Assisting in brainstorming Meeting work deadlines EDUCATION Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA Bachelor of Arts in Marketing with a minor in Communications – September 2009 – May 2013 SKILLS Marketing Market research Record-keeping Teamwork Presentation. Flexibility

What research skills are important?

Goal-setting and data collection are important research skills. Additional important research skills include:

Using different sources to analyze information.

Finding information on the internet.

Interviewing sources.

Writing reports.

Critical thinking.

Planning and scheduling.

Note-taking.

Managing time.

How do you develop good research skills?

You develop good research skills by learning how to find information from multiple high-quality sources, by being wary of confirmation bias, and by starting broad and getting more specific as you go.

When you learn how to tell a reliable source from an unreliable one and get in the habit of finding multiple sources that back up a claim, you’ll have better quality research.

In addition, when you learn how to keep an open mind about what you’ll find, you’ll avoid falling into the trap of confirmation bias, and by staying organized and narrowing your focus as you go (rather than before you start), you’ll be able to gather quality information more efficiently.

What is the importance of research?

The importance of research is that it informs most decisions and strategies in a business. Whether it’s deciding which products to offer or creating a marketing strategy, research should be used in every part of a company.

Because of this, employers want employees who have strong research skills. They know that you’ll be able to put them to work bettering yourself and the organization as a whole.

Should you put research skills on your resume?

Yes, you should include research skills on your resume as they are an important professional skill. Where you include your research skills on your resume will depend on whether you have a lot of experience in research from a previous job or as part of getting your degree, or if you’ve just cultivated them on your own.

If your research skills are based on experience, you could put them down under the tasks you were expected to perform at the job in question. If not, then you should likely list it in your skills section.

University of the People – The Best Research Skills for Success

Association of Internet Research Specialists — What are Research Skills and Why Are They Important?

MasterClass — How to Improve Your Research Skills: 6 Research Tips

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Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.

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Is communication around climate change just hot air?

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By Joe Arney Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)

As an undergraduate student, Emily King Kinsey most enjoyed professors who brought work experience to the classroom.

That’s not the only reason she sought professional experience before enrolling in the doctoral program at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information. But when it comes to the impact her work is having, especially as a researcher, that professional experience is every bit as valuable as she expected it would be.

“I like being able to share those connections I’ve developed—to be able to show some of my own work and talk about my own experiences, and to help students as they prepare for their own professional journeys,” she said.

“I got to see this whole other decision-making component that has to do with how you set policies, how you get people on board with them, how you get the public to understand why these advancements and policies are important.” Emily King Kinsey

Her own scholarly journey is rooted in the intersection between political science and public relations. After completing her master’s in communication at the University of Tennessee, King Kinsey worked at a prominent materials science research group, where she got to see up close the technical advancements needed to create things like lightweight cars or recyclable wind turbines that could help stabilize climate change.

But those developments weren’t the whole story.

“I got to see this whole other decision-making component that has to do with how you set policies, how you get people on board with them, how you get the public to understand why these advancements and policies are important,” she said.

Creating meaningful impact

As growing public pressure mounts on businesses to take a more active role for their responsibility for the changing climate, King Kinsey is interested in understanding how corporations and governments can effectively set policies to create meaningful impact. Finding that intersection of environmental matters, corporate governance and public diplomacy will help her create the impact she seeks, according to her advisor.

“In a grad program, you shouldn’t just be a replica of your advisor. You should be your own person, your own scholar, and she is able to do that because she has that dedication and sense of direction.”

King Kinsey made her program her own by taking political sciences classes outside of CMCI, which helped her bring an international flair to her public relations focus in a way that PhD programs elsewhere didn’t readily offer.

That focus has helped her build on her experience in materials science and innovation to do research with global impact. Her dissertation incorporates renewable energy and climate change as it’s playing out in larger competition between the United States and China.

‘Saying things just to say them’

Both states, she said, are investing in renewable energy development worldwide; in Indonesia, both have poured billions of dollars—China significantly more—into these projects. King Kinsey looks at the consistency of messaging being shared around such investments to better understand the role communication plays in influencing public diplomacy around climate change.

Fisher said mentoring students is her favorite part of being a CMCI professor, and she said King Kinsey’s experiences beyond work—including pursuing a PhD during COVID-19 lockdowns and having a daughter part way through her degree—will make her “a fantastic role model for her students.”

“One thing I admire about Emily is she is figuring out how to find balance—she’s a great parent, she’s doing this intensive research work and she’s navigating a job search,” Fisher said. “That’s so hard for PhD students, especially women, and her experience navigating these things and staying true to herself will make her a great mentor one day. I’m excited to see where she goes and what she does—and I’m excited to keep learning from her.”  

Becoming a parent while pursuing a PhD is a daunting proposition. Spend a few minutes in her company, though, and it’s clear that when King Kinsey sets her heart on something, she’s going to achieve it.

In her case, it will be getting to hug her daughter after she is hooded at commencement in May.

“My advisor and the faculty at CMCI were really supportive of me and advocated for me throughout my journey,” she said. “I’m very motivated to get things done, and they matched that, were supportive and helped me get things done.”

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• 10 April 2024

How to supercharge cancer-fighting cells: give them stem-cell skills

• Sara Reardon 0

Sara Reardon is a freelance journalist based in Bozeman, Montana.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

A CAR T cell (orange; artificially coloured) attacks a cancer cell (green). Credit: Eye Of Science/SPL

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Bioengineered immune cells have been shown to attack and even cure cancer , but they tend to get exhausted if the fight goes on for a long time. Now, two separate research teams have found a way to rejuvenate these cells: make them more like stem cells .

Both teams found that the bespoke immune cells called CAR T cells gain new vigour if engineered to have high levels of a particular protein. These boosted CAR T cells have gene activity similar to that of stem cells and a renewed ability to fend off cancer . Both papers were published today in Nature 1 , 2 .

The papers “open a new avenue for engineering therapeutic T cells for cancer patients”, says Tuoqi Wu, an immunologist at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas who was not involved in the research.

Reviving exhausted cells

CAR T cells are made from the immune cells called T cells, which are isolated from the blood of person who is going to receive treatment for cancer or another disease. The cells are genetically modified to recognize and attack specific proteins — called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) — on the surface of disease-causing cells and reinfused into the person being treated.

But keeping the cells active for long enough to eliminate cancer has proved challenging, especially in solid tumours such as those of the breast and lung. (CAR T cells have been more effective in treating leukaemia and other blood cancers.) So scientists are searching for better ways to help CAR T cells to multiply more quickly and last longer in the body.

Cutting-edge CAR-T cancer therapy is now made in India — at one-tenth the cost

With this goal in mind, a team led by immunologist Crystal Mackall at Stanford University in California and cell and gene therapy researcher Evan Weber at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia compared samples of CAR T cells used to treat people with leukaemia 1 . In some of the recipients, the cancer had responded well to treatment; in others, it had not.

The researchers analysed the role of cellular proteins that regulate gene activity and serve as master switches in the T cells. They found a set of 41 genes that were more active in the CAR T cells associated with a good response to treatment than in cells associated with a poor response. All 41 genes seemed to be regulated by a master-switch protein called FOXO1.

The researchers then altered CAR T cells to make them produce more FOXO1 than usual. Gene activity in these cells began to look like that of T memory stem cells, which recognize cancer and respond to it quickly.

The researchers then injected the engineered cells into mice with various types of cancer. Extra FOXO1 made the CAR T cells better at reducing both solid tumours and blood cancers. The stem-cell-like cells shrank a mouse’s tumour more completely and lasted longer in the body than did standard CAR T cells.

Master-switch molecule

A separate team led by immunologists Phillip Darcy, Junyun Lai and Paul Beavis at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, reached the same conclusion with different methods 2 . Their team was examining the effect of IL-15, an immune-signalling molecule that is administered alongside CAR T cells in some clinical trials. IL-15 helps to switch T cells to a stem-like state, but the cells can get stuck there instead of maturing to fight cancer.

The team analysed gene activity in CAR T cells and found that IL-15 turned on genes associated with FOXO1. The researchers engineered CAR T cells to produce extra-high levels of FOXO1 and showed that they became more stem-like, but also reached maturity and fought cancer without becoming exhausted. “It’s the ideal situation,” Darcy says.

Stem-cell and genetic therapies make a healthy marriage

The team also found that extra-high levels of FOXO1 improved the CAR T cells’ metabolism, allowing them to last much longer when infused into mice. “We were surprised by the magnitude of the effect,” says Beavis.

Mackall says she was excited to see that FOXO1 worked the same way in mice and humans. “It means this is pretty fundamental,” she says.

Engineering CAR T cells that overexpress FOXO1 might be fairly simple to test in people with cancer, although Mackall says researchers will need to determine which people and types of cancer are most likely to respond well to rejuvenated cells. Darcy says that his team is already speaking to clinical researchers about testing FOXO1 in CAR T cells — trials that could start within two years.

And Weber points to an ongoing clinical trial in which people with leukaemia are receiving CAR T cells genetically engineered to produce unusually high levels of another master-switch protein called c-Jun, which also helps T cells avoid exhaustion. The trial’s results have not been released yet, but Mackall says she suspects the same system could be applied to FOXO1 and that overexpressing both proteins might make the cells even more powerful.

Nature 628 , 486 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01043-2

Doan, A. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07300-8 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Chan, J. D. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07242-1 (2024).

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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Communication difficulties in autism spectrum disorder

Many individuals with autism encounter challenges in effective communication. Difficulties with both verbal and nonverbal communication can be frustrating. Still, there are a variety of therapies and alternative communication methods that can help people with autism facing language difficulties succeed in neurotypical spaces.

This post will dive into the types of communication barriers experienced by those with autism, how to recognize autism and speech delays early, and the types of therapies and accommodations that are available to aid those facing the communication challenges associated with autism.

Types of communication difficulties

Individuals with autism may approach communication in non-traditional ways and may experience verbal, nonverbal, and social communication challenges.

Language difficulties associated with ASD might include speaking in a flat tone or repeating words or phrases, known as echolalia. People with autism may also have a speech delay, meaning they may use childlike language even as adults, or they may not have developed speech at all. 1 They also may have difficulty understanding sarcasm and figurative language. 2

For individuals with autism, nonverbal communication might develop differently.

Facial expressions

Individuals with autism may face difficulty in understanding and expressing facial expressions, which are crucial for effective social interaction. Without adequate development of these skills, autistic individuals may have difficulty with interpreting social cues and engaging in meaningful social communication.

Body language

Similarly, individuals with autism may encounter challenges in understanding and utilizing body language effectively.

Underdeveloped nonverbal conversation skills can hinder their ability to engage in social interaction and may contribute to social communication difficulties.

Developing pre-language skills, such as oral language skills, may also present challenges for individuals on the autism spectrum. These difficulties can lead to repetitive or rigid language patterns and behaviors, further impacting their social interactions and communication skills.

Individuals who are neurotypical often use gestures like pointing to complement their verbal communication and typically maintain eye contact during conversations, those with autism may not exhibit these behaviors. They might not engage in typical body language or display facial expressions, which can sometimes lead to misunderstandings or difficulties in expressing their needs.

In particular, many social cues that are widely recognized by people who identify as neurotypical may be missed by someone on the autism spectrum. This can lead to awkwardness or confusion when a socially-expected script is not followed, making it hard for some people with autism to develop close relationships. 3

Additional factors contributing to communication difficulties

Some communication difficulties may be connected with other symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. These symptoms may exacerbate the communication issues or may even be their root cause.

For example, many individuals with autism may experience difficulties with sensory sensitivity. Oversensitivity to sound may make it hard for a person with autism to focus solely on their conversation. In young children, this could also make it difficult to acquire language, as other sounds in the environment may cover up speech. Sensitivity to touch, smell, or visual stimuli may also be distracting, dragging a neurodivergent person’s attention away from communicating effectively. 4

People with autism may also have difficulty recognizing others’ emotions or intentions, a skill sometimes referred to as Theory of Mind; this can make the undertone or unspoken implications of a conversation obscured to an individual with autism. 5

Many neurodivergent people also struggle with executive dysfunction. When executive functioning is impaired, it can hinder someone's ability to initiate or maintain a focus on tasks, including communication tasks. Conversely, this can cause hyperfocus, in which a person can become so focused on their task that they lose awareness of what’s going on around them, including when someone tries to get their attention. 6

Assessment and diagnosis

Early detection of the potential communication concerns associated with ASD can help prevent them or make them less severe. Autism can be detected as early as the toddler stage, with some symptoms including:

• Failure to make eye contact or reciprocate body language, like smiling 7
• Not responding to their own name 7
• Echolalia (repeating sounds or phrases over and over) 7
• “Stimming” behaviors such as hand flapping or rocking back and forth 7
• Sensory sensitivity to textures, tastes, smells, or certain noises 7

If a child is showing early signs of autism or delayed speech, a speech and language evaluation by a professional may help. This testing, performed by a qualified specialist in speech and language development, will assess various aspects of the child’s communication, as well as potential alternative causes, such as hearing loss. 8

Communication strategies

Many tools can help those facing language difficulties communicate more effectively. Augmentative and alternative communication uses additional tools to enhance communication. This could range from body language to paper tools such as spelling boards to digital tools such as text-to-speech programs. 9

Individuals with autism can also benefit from speech therapy. This therapy may help them learn both verbal and nonverbal communication strategies, including more expressive speech patterns, body language, or sign language. 10

People with autism can also be trained in social skills. This usually involves face-to-face instruction with a teacher who can offer guidance in relationship building, conversation skills, and other areas. 11

Supporting individuals with ASD

The family members or caregivers of a child with autism are the first experiences they'll have with social and linguistic development. These role models need to spend time with the child, intentionally developing these skills. Patience is key. It may take a child with autism extra time or effort to absorb what a neurotypical child might pick up quickly. 12

Inclusive education and community support can also help a child with autism succeed. Research shows that modifying classroom environments and accommodating learning differences can improve outcomes for neurodivergent students. 13

Research and innovation

Research into autism is ongoing and continually evolving.

Current studies are looking into ways to detect speech delays even earlier in childhood, augmenting communication with technology, and the effect parents have on the outcome of speech therapy and other treatments. 14

New therapies are being explored for autism and other communication challenges as well. Drug trials are making use of both new and existing medications that may reduce the severity of the core symptoms. It’s important to note, however, that the diversity among those with autism makes it difficult to determine what therapies will work. Many medications work for only a subset of those with autism in their community. 15

Success stories

Though autism can cause many difficulties, it is very possible to live a successful and fulfilling life with such a diagnosis.

Many successful performers, athletes, activists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and artists utilize their strengths and unique perspectives associated with autism.

Some famous names you might recognize—including actor Anthony Hopkins, climate activist Greta Thunberg, baseball star Jim Eisenreich, and novelist Helen Hoang—identify themselves as living with autism.

Many historical figures also may have lived with undiagnosed autism, including scientists Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton, artist Leonardo da Vinci, and fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen. 16

Develop the skills you need to help your students communicate

The University of Kansas School of Education and Human Sciences (KU SOEHS) is here to help you attain your educational dreams.

KU’s online master’s programs in special education are ranked #1 Best Online Master's in Special Education Programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and are designed to help you build a more inclusive classroom environment for all of your students. 17

If you’re ready to earn a master’s to impact your future and career trajectory, schedule a call to speak with an admissions outreach advisor today .

• Retrieved on March 15, 2024, from nidcd.nih.gov/health/autism-spectrum-disorder-communication-problems-children
• Retrieved on March 15, 2024, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991690/
• Retrieved on March 15, 2024, from educationonline.ku.edu/community/social-difficulties-in-autism-spectrum-disorder
• Retrieved on March 15, 2024, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3086654/
• Retrieved on March 15, 2024, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5487761/
• Retrieved on March 15, 2024, from books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xaafOGu0fSIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA133&dq=executive+dysfunction+and+communication&ots=WvuE27WJve&sig=Zr222n8uDTsd3w9WslJXjcjnyF4#v=onepage&q=executive%20dysfunction%20and%20communication&f=false
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IMPORTANT DATES

KU Online M.S.E. Programs Application Workshop Tuesday, April 16, 6-7 p.m. CT | Register

Tackling labour and skills shortages in the EU

Labour and skills shortages are on the rise in all EU Member States. Nearly two thirds (63%) of small and medium-sized businesses said in a recent survey that they cannot find the talent they need . In addition, the Commission has identified 42 occupations which have shortages. To address these labour and skills shortages, the Commission has presented an action plan setting out key measures that the EU, Member States and social partners should take   in the short to medium term. It will help unlock the EU’s growth potential, support its competitiveness, and provide better opportunities for all . 

There are five areas for action: 

• Supporting underrepresented people to enter the labour market  
• Providing support for skills development, training and education  
• Improving working conditions  
• Improving fair intra-EU mobility for workers and learners  
• Attracting talent from outside the EU  

The action plan has been consulted with social partners, which is crucial to understand workers' needs and address labour market challenges. It also follows on from numerous initiatives that the EU, Member States and social partners have already put in place including the European Skills Agenda, the Pact for Skills and the European Year of Skills . The proposed actions are necessary if the EU is to reach its 2030 headline targets on skills and employment, i.e. at least 78% of the population aged 20 to 64 should be in employment, and 60% of adults participating in yearly training. 

For more information  

An economy that works for people  

Press release: Commission sets out actions to tackle labour and skills shortages in the EU 

Social Dialogue  

European Year of Skills  

Pact for Skills  

European Skills Agenda  

Val Duchesse Social Partners Summit 2024

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