content of a research project

• Request new password
• Create a new account

How to Do Your Research Project: A Guide for Students

Student resources, welcome to the digital roadmap and resources.

Work your way through  interactive exercises  for each stage of the research project roadmap and watch  videos   from your pocket supervisor, Gary Thomas. Explore real-world practice through  case studies   and  journal articles . Reflect, revise, and take your learning on the go with  worksheets  and get to grips with key terms and concepts using digital  flashcards .

Click a base camp below to get started.

For lecturers:

Teach the book in a way that suits your lecturer hall and classroom by modifying and adapting PowerPoint templates that include the key points of each chapter. Log in using the tab at the top for access.

For instructors

Access resources that are only available to Faculty and Administrative Staff.

Want to explore the book further?

Order Review Copy

Disclaimer:

This website may contain links to both internal and external websites. All links included were active at the time the website was launched. SAGE does not operate these external websites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. SAGE cannot take responsibility for the changing content or nature of linked sites, as these sites are outside of our control and subject to change without our knowledge. If you do find an inactive link to an external website, please try to locate that website by using a search engine. SAGE will endeavour to update inactive or broken links when possible.

How to write a research plan: Step-by-step guide

Last updated

30 January 2024

Reviewed by

Short on time? Get an AI generated summary of this article instead

Today’s businesses and institutions rely on data and analytics to inform their product and service decisions. These metrics influence how organizations stay competitive and inspire innovation. However, gathering data and insights requires carefully constructed research, and every research project needs a roadmap. This is where a research plan comes into play.

Read this step-by-step guide for writing a detailed research plan that can apply to any project, whether it’s scientific, educational, or business-related.

• What is a research plan?

A research plan is a documented overview of a project in its entirety, from end to end. It details the research efforts, participants, and methods needed, along with any anticipated results. It also outlines the project’s goals and mission, creating layers of steps to achieve those goals within a specified timeline.

Without a research plan, you and your team are flying blind, potentially wasting time and resources to pursue research without structured guidance.

The principal investigator, or PI, is responsible for facilitating the research oversight. They will create the research plan and inform team members and stakeholders of every detail relating to the project. The PI will also use the research plan to inform decision-making throughout the project.

• Why do you need a research plan?

Create a research plan before starting any official research to maximize every effort in pursuing and collecting the research data. Crucially, the plan will model the activities needed at each phase of the research project .

Like any roadmap, a research plan serves as a valuable tool providing direction for those involved in the project—both internally and externally. It will keep you and your immediate team organized and task-focused while also providing necessary definitions and timelines so you can execute your project initiatives with full understanding and transparency.

External stakeholders appreciate a working research plan because it’s a great communication tool, documenting progress and changing dynamics as they arise. Any participants of your planned research sessions will be informed about the purpose of your study, while the exercises will be based on the key messaging outlined in the official plan.

Here are some of the benefits of creating a research plan document for every project:

Project organization and structure

Well-informed participants

All stakeholders and teams align in support of the project

Clearly defined project definitions and purposes

Distractions are eliminated, prioritizing task focus

Timely management of individual task schedules and roles

Costly reworks are avoided

• What should a research plan include?

The different aspects of your research plan will depend on the nature of the project. However, most official research plan documents will include the core elements below. Each aims to define the problem statement , devising an official plan for seeking a solution.

Specific project goals and individual objectives

Ideal strategies or methods for reaching those goals

Required resources

Descriptions of the target audience, sample sizes , demographics, and scopes

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Project background

Research and testing support

Preliminary studies and progress reporting mechanisms

Cost estimates and change order processes

Depending on the research project’s size and scope, your research plan could be brief—perhaps only a few pages of documented plans. Alternatively, it could be a fully comprehensive report. Either way, it’s an essential first step in dictating your project’s facilitation in the most efficient and effective way.

• How to write a research plan for your project

When you start writing your research plan, aim to be detailed about each step, requirement, and idea. The more time you spend curating your research plan, the more precise your research execution efforts will be.

Account for every potential scenario, and be sure to address each and every aspect of the research.

Consider following this flow to develop a great research plan for your project:

Define your project’s purpose

Start by defining your project’s purpose. Identify what your project aims to accomplish and what you are researching. Remember to use clear language.

Thinking about the project’s purpose will help you set realistic goals and inform how you divide tasks and assign responsibilities. These individual tasks will be your stepping stones to reach your overarching goal.

Additionally, you’ll want to identify the specific problem, the usability metrics needed, and the intended solutions.

Know the following three things about your project’s purpose before you outline anything else:

What you’re doing

Why you’re doing it

What you expect from it

Identify individual objectives

With your overarching project objectives in place, you can identify any individual goals or steps needed to reach those objectives. Break them down into phases or steps. You can work backward from the project goal and identify every process required to facilitate it.

Be mindful to identify each unique task so that you can assign responsibilities to various team members. At this point in your research plan development, you’ll also want to assign priority to those smaller, more manageable steps and phases that require more immediate or dedicated attention.

Select research methods

Once you have outlined your goals, objectives, steps, and tasks, it’s time to drill down on selecting research methods . You’ll want to leverage specific research strategies and processes. When you know what methods will help you reach your goals, you and your teams will have direction to perform and execute your assigned tasks.

Research methods might include any of the following:

User interviews : this is a qualitative research method where researchers engage with participants in one-on-one or group conversations. The aim is to gather insights into their experiences, preferences, and opinions to uncover patterns, trends, and data.

Field studies : this approach allows for a contextual understanding of behaviors, interactions, and processes in real-world settings. It involves the researcher immersing themselves in the field, conducting observations, interviews, or experiments to gather in-depth insights.

Card sorting : participants categorize information by sorting content cards into groups based on their perceived similarities. You might use this process to gain insights into participants’ mental models and preferences when navigating or organizing information on websites, apps, or other systems.

Focus groups : use organized discussions among select groups of participants to provide relevant views and experiences about a particular topic.

Diary studies : ask participants to record their experiences, thoughts, and activities in a diary over a specified period. This method provides a deeper understanding of user experiences, uncovers patterns, and identifies areas for improvement.

Five-second testing: participants are shown a design, such as a web page or interface, for just five seconds. They then answer questions about their initial impressions and recall, allowing you to evaluate the design’s effectiveness.

Surveys : get feedback from participant groups with structured surveys. You can use online forms, telephone interviews, or paper questionnaires to reveal trends, patterns, and correlations.

Tree testing : tree testing involves researching web assets through the lens of findability and navigability. Participants are given a textual representation of the site’s hierarchy (the “tree”) and asked to locate specific information or complete tasks by selecting paths.

Usability testing : ask participants to interact with a product, website, or application to evaluate its ease of use. This method enables you to uncover areas for improvement in digital key feature functionality by observing participants using the product.

Live website testing: research and collect analytics that outlines the design, usability, and performance efficiencies of a website in real time.

There are no limits to the number of research methods you could use within your project. Just make sure your research methods help you determine the following:

What do you plan to do with the research findings?

What decisions will this research inform? How can your stakeholders leverage the research data and results?

Recruit participants and allocate tasks

Next, identify the participants needed to complete the research and the resources required to complete the tasks. Different people will be proficient at different tasks, and having a task allocation plan will allow everything to run smoothly.

Prepare a thorough project summary

Every well-designed research plan will feature a project summary. This official summary will guide your research alongside its communications or messaging. You’ll use the summary while recruiting participants and during stakeholder meetings. It can also be useful when conducting field studies.

Ensure this summary includes all the elements of your research project . Separate the steps into an easily explainable piece of text that includes the following:

An introduction: the message you’ll deliver to participants about the interview, pre-planned questioning, and testing tasks.

Interview questions: prepare questions you intend to ask participants as part of your research study, guiding the sessions from start to finish.

An exit message: draft messaging your teams will use to conclude testing or survey sessions. These should include the next steps and express gratitude for the participant’s time.

Create a realistic timeline

While your project might already have a deadline or a results timeline in place, you’ll need to consider the time needed to execute it effectively.

Realistically outline the time needed to properly execute each supporting phase of research and implementation. And, as you evaluate the necessary schedules, be sure to include additional time for achieving each milestone in case any changes or unexpected delays arise.

For this part of your research plan, you might find it helpful to create visuals to ensure your research team and stakeholders fully understand the information.

Determine how to present your results

A research plan must also describe how you intend to present your results. Depending on the nature of your project and its goals, you might dedicate one team member (the PI) or assume responsibility for communicating the findings yourself.

In this part of the research plan, you’ll articulate how you’ll share the results. Detail any materials you’ll use, such as:

Presentations and slides

A project report booklet

A project findings pamphlet

Documents with key takeaways and statistics

Graphic visuals to support your findings

• Format your research plan

As you create your research plan, you can enjoy a little creative freedom. A plan can assume many forms, so format it how you see fit. Determine the best layout based on your specific project, intended communications, and the preferences of your teams and stakeholders.

Find format inspiration among the following layouts:

Written outlines

Narrative storytelling

Visual mapping

Graphic timelines

Remember, the research plan format you choose will be subject to change and adaptation as your research and findings unfold. However, your final format should ideally outline questions, problems, opportunities, and expectations.

• Research plan example

Imagine you’ve been tasked with finding out how to get more customers to order takeout from an online food delivery platform. The goal is to improve satisfaction and retain existing customers. You set out to discover why more people aren’t ordering and what it is they do want to order or experience. 

You identify the need for a research project that helps you understand what drives customer loyalty . But before you jump in and start calling past customers, you need to develop a research plan—the roadmap that provides focus, clarity, and realistic details to the project.

Here’s an example outline of a research plan you might put together:

Project title

Project members involved in the research plan

Purpose of the project (provide a summary of the research plan’s intent)

Objective 1 (provide a short description for each objective)

Objective 2

Objective 3

Proposed timeline

Audience (detail the group you want to research, such as customers or non-customers)

Budget (how much you think it might cost to do the research)

Risk factors/contingencies (any potential risk factors that may impact the project’s success)

Remember, your research plan doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel—it just needs to fit your project’s unique needs and aims.

Customizing a research plan template

Some companies offer research plan templates to help get you started. However, it may make more sense to develop your own customized plan template. Be sure to include the core elements of a great research plan with your template layout, including the following:

Introductions to participants and stakeholders

Background problems and needs statement

Significance, ethics, and purpose

Research methods, questions, and designs

Preliminary beliefs and expectations

Implications and intended outcomes

Realistic timelines for each phase

Conclusion and presentations

How many pages should a research plan be?

Generally, a research plan can vary in length between 500 to 1,500 words. This is roughly three pages of content. More substantial projects will be 2,000 to 3,500 words, taking up four to seven pages of planning documents.

What is the difference between a research plan and a research proposal?

A research plan is a roadmap to success for research teams. A research proposal, on the other hand, is a dissertation aimed at convincing or earning the support of others. Both are relevant in creating a guide to follow to complete a project goal.

What are the seven steps to developing a research plan?

While each research project is different, it’s best to follow these seven general steps to create your research plan:

Defining the problem

Identifying goals

Choosing research methods

Recruiting participants

Preparing the brief or summary

Establishing task timelines

Defining how you will present the findings

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous research faster?

Do you share your research findings with others?

Do you analyze research data?

Start for free today, add your research, and get to key insights faster

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 18 April 2023

Last updated: 27 February 2023

Last updated: 6 February 2023

Last updated: 6 October 2023

Last updated: 5 February 2023

Last updated: 16 April 2023

Last updated: 7 March 2023

Last updated: 9 March 2023

Last updated: 12 December 2023

Last updated: 11 March 2024

Last updated: 6 March 2024

Last updated: 5 March 2024

Last updated: 13 May 2024

Latest articles

Related topics, .css-je19u9{-webkit-align-items:flex-end;-webkit-box-align:flex-end;-ms-flex-align:flex-end;align-items:flex-end;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;-webkit-box-flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;row-gap:0;text-align:center;max-width:671px;}@media (max-width: 1079px){.css-je19u9{max-width:400px;}.css-je19u9>span{white-space:pre;}}@media (max-width: 799px){.css-je19u9{max-width:400px;}.css-je19u9>span{white-space:pre;}} decide what to .css-1kiodld{max-height:56px;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}@media (max-width: 1079px){.css-1kiodld{display:none;}} build next, decide what to build next.

Users report unexpectedly high data usage, especially during streaming sessions.

Users find it hard to navigate from the home page to relevant playlists in the app.

It would be great to have a sleep timer feature, especially for bedtime listening.

I need better filters to find the songs or artists I’m looking for.

Log in or sign up

Get started for free

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Indian J Anaesth
• v.60(9); 2016 Sep

How to write a research proposal?

Department of Anaesthesiology, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Devika Rani Duggappa

Writing the proposal of a research work in the present era is a challenging task due to the constantly evolving trends in the qualitative research design and the need to incorporate medical advances into the methodology. The proposal is a detailed plan or ‘blueprint’ for the intended study, and once it is completed, the research project should flow smoothly. Even today, many of the proposals at post-graduate evaluation committees and application proposals for funding are substandard. A search was conducted with keywords such as research proposal, writing proposal and qualitative using search engines, namely, PubMed and Google Scholar, and an attempt has been made to provide broad guidelines for writing a scientifically appropriate research proposal.

INTRODUCTION

A clean, well-thought-out proposal forms the backbone for the research itself and hence becomes the most important step in the process of conduct of research.[ 1 ] The objective of preparing a research proposal would be to obtain approvals from various committees including ethics committee [details under ‘Research methodology II’ section [ Table 1 ] in this issue of IJA) and to request for grants. However, there are very few universally accepted guidelines for preparation of a good quality research proposal. A search was performed with keywords such as research proposal, funding, qualitative and writing proposals using search engines, namely, PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus.

Five ‘C’s while writing a literature review

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

A proposal needs to show how your work fits into what is already known about the topic and what new paradigm will it add to the literature, while specifying the question that the research will answer, establishing its significance, and the implications of the answer.[ 2 ] The proposal must be capable of convincing the evaluation committee about the credibility, achievability, practicality and reproducibility (repeatability) of the research design.[ 3 ] Four categories of audience with different expectations may be present in the evaluation committees, namely academic colleagues, policy-makers, practitioners and lay audiences who evaluate the research proposal. Tips for preparation of a good research proposal include; ‘be practical, be persuasive, make broader links, aim for crystal clarity and plan before you write’. A researcher must be balanced, with a realistic understanding of what can be achieved. Being persuasive implies that researcher must be able to convince other researchers, research funding agencies, educational institutions and supervisors that the research is worth getting approval. The aim of the researcher should be clearly stated in simple language that describes the research in a way that non-specialists can comprehend, without use of jargons. The proposal must not only demonstrate that it is based on an intelligent understanding of the existing literature but also show that the writer has thought about the time needed to conduct each stage of the research.[ 4 , 5 ]

CONTENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The contents or formats of a research proposal vary depending on the requirements of evaluation committee and are generally provided by the evaluation committee or the institution.

In general, a cover page should contain the (i) title of the proposal, (ii) name and affiliation of the researcher (principal investigator) and co-investigators, (iii) institutional affiliation (degree of the investigator and the name of institution where the study will be performed), details of contact such as phone numbers, E-mail id's and lines for signatures of investigators.

The main contents of the proposal may be presented under the following headings: (i) introduction, (ii) review of literature, (iii) aims and objectives, (iv) research design and methods, (v) ethical considerations, (vi) budget, (vii) appendices and (viii) citations.[ 4 ]

Introduction

It is also sometimes termed as ‘need for study’ or ‘abstract’. Introduction is an initial pitch of an idea; it sets the scene and puts the research in context.[ 6 ] The introduction should be designed to create interest in the reader about the topic and proposal. It should convey to the reader, what you want to do, what necessitates the study and your passion for the topic.[ 7 ] Some questions that can be used to assess the significance of the study are: (i) Who has an interest in the domain of inquiry? (ii) What do we already know about the topic? (iii) What has not been answered adequately in previous research and practice? (iv) How will this research add to knowledge, practice and policy in this area? Some of the evaluation committees, expect the last two questions, elaborated under a separate heading of ‘background and significance’.[ 8 ] Introduction should also contain the hypothesis behind the research design. If hypothesis cannot be constructed, the line of inquiry to be used in the research must be indicated.

Review of literature

It refers to all sources of scientific evidence pertaining to the topic in interest. In the present era of digitalisation and easy accessibility, there is an enormous amount of relevant data available, making it a challenge for the researcher to include all of it in his/her review.[ 9 ] It is crucial to structure this section intelligently so that the reader can grasp the argument related to your study in relation to that of other researchers, while still demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. It is preferable to summarise each article in a paragraph, highlighting the details pertinent to the topic of interest. The progression of review can move from the more general to the more focused studies, or a historical progression can be used to develop the story, without making it exhaustive.[ 1 ] Literature should include supporting data, disagreements and controversies. Five ‘C's may be kept in mind while writing a literature review[ 10 ] [ Table 1 ].

Aims and objectives

The research purpose (or goal or aim) gives a broad indication of what the researcher wishes to achieve in the research. The hypothesis to be tested can be the aim of the study. The objectives related to parameters or tools used to achieve the aim are generally categorised as primary and secondary objectives.

Research design and method

The objective here is to convince the reader that the overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem and to impress upon the reader that the methodology/sources chosen are appropriate for the specific topic. It should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

In this section, the methods and sources used to conduct the research must be discussed, including specific references to sites, databases, key texts or authors that will be indispensable to the project. There should be specific mention about the methodological approaches to be undertaken to gather information, about the techniques to be used to analyse it and about the tests of external validity to which researcher is committed.[ 10 , 11 ]

The components of this section include the following:[ 4 ]

Population and sample

Population refers to all the elements (individuals, objects or substances) that meet certain criteria for inclusion in a given universe,[ 12 ] and sample refers to subset of population which meets the inclusion criteria for enrolment into the study. The inclusion and exclusion criteria should be clearly defined. The details pertaining to sample size are discussed in the article “Sample size calculation: Basic priniciples” published in this issue of IJA.

Data collection

The researcher is expected to give a detailed account of the methodology adopted for collection of data, which include the time frame required for the research. The methodology should be tested for its validity and ensure that, in pursuit of achieving the results, the participant's life is not jeopardised. The author should anticipate and acknowledge any potential barrier and pitfall in carrying out the research design and explain plans to address them, thereby avoiding lacunae due to incomplete data collection. If the researcher is planning to acquire data through interviews or questionnaires, copy of the questions used for the same should be attached as an annexure with the proposal.

Rigor (soundness of the research)

This addresses the strength of the research with respect to its neutrality, consistency and applicability. Rigor must be reflected throughout the proposal.

It refers to the robustness of a research method against bias. The author should convey the measures taken to avoid bias, viz. blinding and randomisation, in an elaborate way, thus ensuring that the result obtained from the adopted method is purely as chance and not influenced by other confounding variables.

Consistency

Consistency considers whether the findings will be consistent if the inquiry was replicated with the same participants and in a similar context. This can be achieved by adopting standard and universally accepted methods and scales.

Applicability

Applicability refers to the degree to which the findings can be applied to different contexts and groups.[ 13 ]

Data analysis

This section deals with the reduction and reconstruction of data and its analysis including sample size calculation. The researcher is expected to explain the steps adopted for coding and sorting the data obtained. Various tests to be used to analyse the data for its robustness, significance should be clearly stated. Author should also mention the names of statistician and suitable software which will be used in due course of data analysis and their contribution to data analysis and sample calculation.[ 9 ]

Ethical considerations

Medical research introduces special moral and ethical problems that are not usually encountered by other researchers during data collection, and hence, the researcher should take special care in ensuring that ethical standards are met. Ethical considerations refer to the protection of the participants' rights (right to self-determination, right to privacy, right to autonomy and confidentiality, right to fair treatment and right to protection from discomfort and harm), obtaining informed consent and the institutional review process (ethical approval). The researcher needs to provide adequate information on each of these aspects.

Informed consent needs to be obtained from the participants (details discussed in further chapters), as well as the research site and the relevant authorities.

When the researcher prepares a research budget, he/she should predict and cost all aspects of the research and then add an additional allowance for unpredictable disasters, delays and rising costs. All items in the budget should be justified.

Appendices are documents that support the proposal and application. The appendices will be specific for each proposal but documents that are usually required include informed consent form, supporting documents, questionnaires, measurement tools and patient information of the study in layman's language.

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. Although the words ‘references and bibliography’ are different, they are used interchangeably. It refers to all references cited in the research proposal.

Successful, qualitative research proposals should communicate the researcher's knowledge of the field and method and convey the emergent nature of the qualitative design. The proposal should follow a discernible logic from the introduction to presentation of the appendices.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Home of Mass Communication Project Topics in Nigeria

No.1 Mass Communication Research Topics and Materials

EXAMPLE OF TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR PROJECT

Table of contents for project.

INTRODUCTION: In response to question from clients and numerous young researchers especially at the undergraduate level that what “constitute a research project outline”. i.e what each chapter entails.

The table of contents otherwise called TOC which is a roadmap to each part of the project/ thesis chapters. A table of contents often come before the full thesis/project to give insight into the research project. It allows readers to locate specific information or visit their favourite parts/chapter within the research project. A table of contents helps readers to decide what part of the project they want to read first, in short, it offers an opportunity where to start. For instance, one may jump to research methodology if the reader is interested in the method (s) used in carrying out the study and so on.

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction

• General description of the area of study
• Problem analysis (Problem Statement)
• Purpose of study (Objectives of the Study)
• Relevant research questions
• Statement of the hypothesis
• Delimitation (scope) of the study
• Significance of the research problem and the justification for investigating it.
• Definition of (Unfamiliar) terms.
• References, Chapter 1

CHAPTER TWO: Literature Review

• Historical background
• Models (s) and or theories relevant to research questions & hypothesis
• Current literature based on each of the relevant variables of the model
• Empirical studies
• Summary of chapter
• Reference chapter 2

CHAPTER THREE: Methodology

• A brief outline of the chapter
• Restatement of the research questions and hypothesis (optional)
• Research design and Method (s)
•  Study population
• Sampling design and Technique
• Simple size
• Data collection instrument
• A pilot study, a test of validity and reliability of the study instrument
• Administration of the data collection instrument
• Procedures analyzing data
• References for the chapter 3

CHAPTER FOUR: Presentation and analysis of data

• A brief introduction of the chapter
• Criterion group returns; respondents’ characteristics
• Presentation and analysis of data according to research questions
• Presentation and analysis of data according to test questions
• Analysis of other data

CHAPTER FIVE: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations

• Summary of the study including a comprehensive summary of the findings
• The conclusion is drawn from the finding including how the study has answered the research questions and tested the hypothesis
• Recommendations based on the conclusion
• Suggestions for their studies
• References Chapter 5

Below is an example of how a table of content of a typical project or thesis should look like, though, it differs from school to school and level to level, yet this is a framework for students.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certification/ consent                                         

Dedication                                                             

Acknowledgement                                               

 T able of Contents                                               

 A bstract                                                                                                                    

CHAPTER ONE

1.0       Introduction

1.1       Background to the Study                                                         

1.2       Statement of the Problem/ Problem Statement

1.3       Objectives of the Study/ Aim of the Research                                                

1.4       Research Questions               

1.5       Scope of the Study                 

1.6       Significance of the Study              

1.7       Operational Definition of Terms     

            References

CHAPTER TWO

2.0       LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1       Conceptual Review 

2.2       Empirical Studies               

2.3       Theoretical Framework             

2.4       Summary                 

            References 

CHAPTER THREE

3.0       Research Methodology

3.1       Research Design   

3.2.      Research Method(s)         

3.2       Population of the Study            

3.3       Sampling Technique       

3.4       Sample Size

3.5       Data Collection Instrument (s)        

3.6       Validity and Reliability of the Instrument (s)        

3.7       Data Collection Method(s)                  

3.8       Data Analysis Method (s)       

            References      

  CHAPTER FOUR

4.0       DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

4.1       Data Presentation and Analysis          

4.2       Answer to Research Questions (Optional)

4.2       Discussion of Findings          

CHAPTER FIVE

5.0 SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND LIMITATION (S)

5.1  Summary              

5.2  Conclusion                 

5.3  Recommendations              

5.4  Limitations for Further Studies         

      References                

      Appendix

DOWNLOAD THE PRELIMINARY PAGES INCLUDING TABLE OF CONTENTS (DOC)

DOWNLOAD THE PRELIMINARY PAGES INCLUDING TABLE OF CONTENTS (PDF)

Views: 3499

Related Project Topics:

Assessment of newspaper coverage of fifa world cup.

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The study assessed newspaper coverage of FIFA World Cup with a particular focus on the Daily Trust and the Punch newspaper.

AUDIENCE PERCEPTION OF MEDIA OWNERSHIP ON NEWSPAPER REPORTAGE

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The study investigated audience perception of media ownership on newspaper reportage with a focus on Daily Trust newspaper. The study was

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF MEDIA MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT MEDIA

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The main objective of this study was to investigate the problems and prospects of media management in Nigeria government owned media

INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ON NATIONAL UNIFICATION

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The core objective of this study was to investigate the influence of social media on national unification; specifically the influence and

INFLUENCE OF Ai TOOLS ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS

(Last Updated On: )ABSTRACT: The research investigated the influence of Ai tools on the academic performance of ABUJA students. The research was anchored on Technological

INFLUENCE OF CHATGPT ON WRITING SKILLS AMONG STUDENTS

(Last Updated On: )ABSTRACT: The research investigated the influence of CHATGPT on writing skills among university of Uyo students. The research was anchored on Technological

INFLUENCE OF Ai ON THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN NIGERIA

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The study investigated the influence of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) on the practice of public relations in Nigeria. The study was anchored

INFLUENCE OF CLICKBAIT HEADLINES ON NEWS CONSUMPTION AND OPINION FORMATION AMONG STUDENTS

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The main objective of the study was to investigate the role of clickbait headlines on news consumption and opinion formation among

INFLUENCE OF CHATGPT ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG RSU STUDENTS 

(Last Updated On: )ABSTRACT: The research investigated the influence of CHATGPT on the academic performance of students in Nigeria universities with a focus on Rivers

EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON PRODUCT PROMOTION IN LAGOS

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The study investigated the effectiveness of social media on product promotion. The study was anchored on Technological Determinism Theory (TDT) to

USE OF NEW MEDIA AS A BUSINESS TOOL AMONG UNILAG STUDENTS DURING THE ASUU STRIKE

(Last Updated On: ) ABSTRACT: This study examined the use of new media as a business tool among undergraduates of University of Lagos during the ASUU

INTERNET ACCESSIBILITY AND USAGE IN RURAL AREAS IN NIGERIA

(Last Updated On: )Abstract: The study is set out to examine the Internet accessibility and usage in rural areas in Nigeria in order to reveal

Call : 08033061386,  Whatsapp : 07033401559,  Email : [email protected] 

Address: No. 2, His Grace Shopping Complex, Ramat Junction, Ayeekale, Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria.

MBA Knowledge Base

Business • Management • Technology

Home » Research Methodology » Contents and Layout of Research Report

Contents and Layout of Research Report

Contents of research report.

The researcher must keep in mind that his research report must contain following aspects:

• Purpose of study
• Significance of his study or statement of the problem
• Review of literature
• Methodology
• Interpretation of data
• Conclusions and suggestions
• Bibliography

These can be discussed in detail as under:

(1) Purpose of study:

Research is one direction oriented study. He should discuss the problem of his study. He must give background of the problem. He must lay down his hypothesis of the study. Hypothesis is the statement indicating the nature of the problem. He should be able to collect data, analyze it and prove the hypothesis . The importance of the problem for the advancement of knowledge or removed of some evil may also be explained. He must use review of literature or the data from secondary source for explaining the statement of the problems.

(2) Significance of study:

Research is re-search and hence the researcher may highlight the earlier research in new manner or establish new theory. He must refer earlier research work and distinguish his own research from earlier work. He must explain how his research is different and how his research topic is different and how his research topic is important. In a statement of his problem, he must be able to explain in brief the historical account of the topic and way in which he can make and attempt. In his study to conduct the research on his topic.

(3) Review of Literature :

Research is a continuous process. He cannot avoid earlier research work. He must start with earlier work. He should note down all such research work, published in books, journals or unpublished thesis. He will get guidelines for his research from taking a review of literature . He should collect information in respect of earlier research work. He should enlist them in the given below:

• Author/researcher
• Title of research /Name of book
• Year of publication
• Objectives of his study
• Conclusion/suggestions

Then he can compare this information with his study to show separate identity of his study. He must be honest to point out similarities and differences of his study from earlier research work.

(4) Methodology:

It is related to collection of data. There are two sources for collecting data; primary and secondary. Primary data is original and collected in field work, either through questionnaire interviews. The secondary data relied on library work. Such primary data are collected by sampling method . The procedure for selecting the sample must be mentioned. The methodology must give various aspects of the problem that are studied for valid generalization about the phenomena. The scales of measurement must be explained along with different concepts used in the study.

While conducting a research based on field work, the procedural things like definition of universe, preparation of source list must be given. We use case study method , historical research etc. He must make it clear as to which method is used in his research work. When questionnaire is prepared, a copy of it must be given in appendix.

(5) Interpretation of data :

Mainly the data collected from primary source need to be interpreted in systematic manner. The tabulation must be completed to draw conclusions. All the questions are not useful for report writing . One has to select them or club them according to hypothesis or objectives of study .

(6) Conclusions/suggestions:

Data analysis forms the crux of the research problem . The information collected in field work is useful to draw conclusions of study. In relation with the objectives of study the analysis of data may lead the researcher to pin point his suggestions. This is the most important part of study. The conclusions must be based on logical and statistical reasoning. The report should contain not only the generalization of inference but also the basis on which the inferences are drawn. All sorts of proofs, numerical and logical, must be given in support of any theory that has been advanced. He should point out the limitations of his study.

(7) Bibliography:

The list of references must be arranged in alphabetical order and be presented in appendix. The books should be given in first section and articles are in second section and research projects in the third. The pattern of bibliography is considered convenient and satisfactory from the point of view of reader.

(8) Appendices:

The general information in tabular form which is not directly used in the analysis of data but which is useful to understand the background of study can be given in appendix.

Layout of the Research Report

There is scientific method for the layout of research report . The layout of research report means as to what the research report should contain. The contents of the research report are noted below:

• Preliminary Page

(1) Preliminary Pages:

These must be title of the research topic and data. There must be preface of foreword to the research work. It should be followed by table of contents. The list of tables, maps should be given.

(2) Main Text:

It provides the complete outline of research report along with all details. The title page is reported in the main text. Details of text are given continuously as divided in different chapters.

• (a) Introduction
• (b) Statement of the problem
• (c) The analysis of data
• (d) The implications drawn from the results
• (e) The summary

(a) Introduction :

Its purpose is to introduce the research topic to readers. It must cover statement of the research problem , hypotheses, objectives of study, review of literature, and the methodology to cover primary and secondary data, limitations of study and chapter scheme. Some may give in brief in the first chapter the introduction of the research project highlighting the importance of study. This is followed by research methodology in separate chapter.

The methodology should point out the method of study, the research design and method of data collection.

(b) Statement of the problem :

This is crux of his research. It highlights main theme of his study. It must be in nontechnical language. It should be in simple manner so ordinary reader may follow it. The social research must be made available to common man. The research in agricultural problems must be easy for farmers to read it.

(c) Analysis of data :

Data so collected should be presented in systematic manner and with its help, conclusions can be drawn. This helps to test the hypothesis . Data analysis must be made to confirm the objectives of the study.

(d) Implications of Data :

The results based on the analysis of data must be valid. This is the main body of research. It contains statistical summaries and analysis of data. There should be logical sequence in the analysis of data. The primary data may lead to establish the results. He must have separate chapter on conclusions and recommendations. The conclusions must be based on data analysis. The conclusions must be such which may lead to generalization and its applicability in similar circumstances. The conditions of research work limiting its scope for generalization must be made clear by the researcher.

(e) Summary :

This is conclusive part of study. It makes the reader to understand by reading summary the knowledge of the research work. This is also a synopsis of study.

(3) End Matter:

It covers relevant appendices covering general information, the concepts and bibliography. The index may also be added to the report.

Related posts:

• Writing the Research Report
• Preparing a Research Report
• Referencing a Research Report
• Steps Involved in Drafting a Research Report
• The Research Problem
• The Purpose of Research
• Significance of Research
• The Basic Types of Research
• Classification and Tabulation of Data in Research
• Documentary Sources of Information in Research

One thought on “ Contents and Layout of Research Report ”

Any more research’s is welcome….

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Current Employees
• Duke & Durham
• Human Resources
• Connect With Us
• External Applicants
• Current Duke Employees
• Duke Health Careers

SENIOR RESEARCH PROJECT MANAGER

Durham, NC, US, 27710

School of Medicine

Established in 1930, Duke University School of Medicine is the youngest of the nation's top medical schools. Ranked sixth among medical schools in the nation, the School takes pride in being an inclusive community of outstanding learners, investigators, clinicians, and staff where interdisciplinary collaboration is embraced and great ideas accelerate translation of fundamental scientific discoveries to improve human health locally and around the globe. Composed of more than 2,600 faculty physicians and researchers, nearly 2,000 students, and more than 6,200 staff, the Duke University School of Medicine along with the Duke University School of Nursing, and Duke University Health System comprise Duke Health, a world-class academic medical center. The Health System encompasses Duke University Hospital, Duke Regional Hospital, Duke Raleigh Hospital, Duke Health Integrated Practice, Duke Primary Care, Duke Home Care and Hospice, Duke Health and Wellness, and multiple affiliations.

Duke Aging Center

The Duke Aging Center is the University's multidisciplinary hub for aging research and research education. With affiliated investigators and trainees from diverse Schools, Departments, Centers, and Institutes across the institution, all aging roads at Duke lead to the Aging Center.

The Senior Research Project Manager will be responsible for the effective management of a research program or portfolio and requires a deep understanding of various interconnected aspects. It requires not only knowledge of the scientific and regulatory sides but also a comprehensive grasp of institutional and organizational dynamics, financial and grants management, HR regulations, and research administration.

Occupational Summary:

Manage high-level research projects that are of considerable size, scope, and/or complexity. Develop, coordinate, and supervise research, financial and administrative activities of multiple complex grants/programs. Supervise activities performed by subordinates in the collection, compilation, documentation, and analysis of research data.

Work Performed:

Program Management – 60%

• Lead collaborative efforts with the principal investigator(s), research staff, and/or administrative staff in developing, improving, and conducting research proposals, and project evaluation activities, accomplishing directives, and facilitating the resolution of problems.
• Independently monitoring and ensuring team compliance with deadlines as needed. Oversee the development and implementation of policies and procedures.
• Lead the formulation and implementation of the short and long-range goals for the project/program; set priorities, assign responsibilities, and establish timetables. Project future needs and formulate operational strategies consistent with projections.
• Determine key indicators of program success, and set up processes for obtaining metrics. Monitor, report on, and evaluate program effectiveness using qualitative and quantitative research techniques; investigate trends, and recommend and implement modifications to improve program effectiveness.
• Lead discussions with other staff involved in data collection, data analysis, and the execution of the evaluation to ensure compliance with protocol guidelines and adherence to requirements of the project/program; identify problems and take action as appropriate; review study files to ensure accuracy and completeness of data.
• Oversee preparation efforts for a variety of narrative and analytical reports and annual progress reports; monitor adherence to established timelines and recommend corrective action as necessary.
• Analyze and interpret data in conjunction with the principal investigator (s), statisticians, and other members of the research team as appropriate; prepare presentations and written reports and analysis setting forth progress, trends, and appropriate recommendations or conclusions; collaborate on the preparation of manuscripts for publication, as appropriate.
• Review journals, abstracts, and/or scientific literature to keep abreast of new developments and to obtain information regarding previous studies to aid in the planning of new studies.
• Lead the collection, analysis, interpretation, and documentation of all data generated by the participating parties within the project. Compile and maintain records, reports, and documentation of project activities for use in project evaluation.
• Develop and maintain relationships with all project stakeholders. Plan and conduct meetings with collaborators to ensure compliance with established practices, implement new policies, and keep employees abreast of current changes and standards.

Research Program financial management – 25%

• Work collaboratively with the SOM Grants Team (RASR) to monitor fiscal performance tracking of studies, identifying budget concerns, program implementation issues, and developing resolutions. Advising PI’s on necessary budget adjustments to align with Duke, program, and sponsor requirements. Serve as an expert resource on program/project fund codes and maintain a working knowledge of institutional research administration processes and policies.
• Provide expert guidance to study team members to ensure participant care expenses are handled; troubleshoot, escalate, and resolve issues. Develop study budgets. Coordinate operational plans for multiple research studies.
• Develop systems and documents including process flow, training manuals, and standard operating procedures to be used unit-wide. 
• Manage and coordinate the activities of a project(s) with responsibility for results in terms of costs, methods, and reporting requirements. Provide guidance as requested regarding hiring, training, promotions, and disciplinary issues for technical personnel.
• Ensure fiscal oversight of projects through the development of detailed budgets and schedules. Prepare operational and financial reports and analyses setting forth progress, adverse trends, and appropriate recommendations.
• Use system reports to ensure unit, division, or department compliance with institutional requirements and other policies; assist team members with understanding these requirements and policies.

Leadership and professionalism – 15%  

• Train or oversee others in the above tasks. Proactively seek opportunities to add relevant skills and/or certifications to own portfolio and disseminate information to others as needed .
• Uses advanced subject matter expertise to solve problems.
• Navigate processes and people involved in Duke clinical research, demonstrate organizational awareness, and have the interpersonal skills necessary to get work done efficiently. Demonstrates resilience and is adaptive to change.
• Communicates effectively with others, regardless of reporting relationship, to accomplish shared work objectives.

The above statements describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals assigned to this classification. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities and duties required of personnel so classified.

Required Qualifications at this Level

Education/Training:

Bachelor's degree in a related field.

Experience:

Minimum of eight years of related experience. OR AN EQUIVALENT COMBINATION OF RELEVANT EDUCATION AND/OR EXPERIENCE

Preferred Skills:

The ideal candidate will possess many of the following skills:

• Strong skills in both communication and program management, demonstrating the ability to plan and prioritize workload to meet deadlines
• Demonstrated flexibility and willingness to acquire new skills
• Skills  evaluating program performance, summarizing findings, analyzing results to identify strengths and weaknesses and alternative solutions to problems, and forming an action plan
• Knowledge of business  and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, and coordination of people and resources
• Working knowledge of NIH grant requirements; Programmatic and financial experience with federal grants
• Familiarity with eRA Commons/ASSIST to include progress report preparation  (RPPR)

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in related field.

Duke is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing employment opportunity without regard to an individual's age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

Duke aspires to create a community built on collaboration, innovation, creativity, and belonging. Our collective success depends on the robust exchange of ideas—an exchange that is best when the rich diversity of our perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences flourishes. To achieve this exchange, it is essential that all members of the community feel secure and welcome, that the contributions of all individuals are respected, and that all voices are heard. All members of our community have a responsibility to uphold these values.

Essential Physical Job Functions: Certain jobs at Duke University and Duke University Health System may include essentialjob functions that require specific physical and/or mental abilities. Additional information and provision for requests for reasonable accommodation will be provided by each hiring department.

Nearest Major Market: Durham Nearest Secondary Market: Raleigh

Duke is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing employment opportunity without regard to an individual’s age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Read more about Duke’s commitment to affirmative action and nondiscrimination at hr.duke.edu/eeo.

This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

Published on 25.6.2024 in Vol 26 (2024)

Making Science Computable Using Evidence-Based Medicine on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources: Standards Development Project

Authors of this article:

Original Paper

• Andrey Soares 1 , PhD   ; 
• Lisa M Schilling 1 , MD, MSPH   ; 
• Joshua Richardson 2 , MS, MLiS, PhD   ; 
• Bhagvan Kommadi 3, 4 , MS   ; 
• Vignesh Subbian 4, 5 , PhD   ; 
• Joanne Dehnbostel 4, 6 , MS, MPH   ; 
• Khalid Shahin 4, 6 , BA   ; 
• Karen A Robinson 4, 7 , PhD   ; 
• Muhammad Afzal 4, 8 , PhD   ; 
• Harold P Lehmann 4, 7 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Ilkka Kunnamo 4, 9 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Brian S Alper 4, 6 , MD, MSPH  

1 Department of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO, United States

2 Center for Informatics, Research Triangle Institute International, Berkeley, CA, United States

3 Quantica Computacao, Hyderabad, India

4 Scientific Knowledge Accelerator Foundation, Franklin, NC, United States

5 College of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

6 Computable Publishing LLC, Franklin, NC, United States

7 Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States

8 Department of Computing and Data Science, Birmingham City University, England, United Kingdom

9 Duodecim Publishing Company Ltd, Helsinki, Finland

Corresponding Author:

Andrey Soares, PhD

Department of Medicine

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

1890 North Revere Court

Mailstop F443

Aurora, CO, 80045

United States

Phone: 1 3037242825

Email: [email protected]

Background: Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has the potential to improve health outcomes, but EBM has not been widely integrated into the systems used for research or clinical decision-making. There has not been a scalable and reusable computer-readable standard for distributing research results and synthesized evidence among creators, implementers, and the ultimate users of that evidence. Evidence that is more rapidly updated, synthesized, disseminated, and implemented would improve both the delivery of EBM and evidence-based health care policy.

Objective: This study aimed to introduce the EBM on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) project (EBMonFHIR), which is extending the methods and infrastructure of Health Level Seven (HL7) FHIR to provide an interoperability standard for the electronic exchange of health-related scientific knowledge.

Methods: As an ongoing process, the project creates and refines FHIR resources to represent evidence from clinical studies and syntheses of those studies and develops tools to assist with the creation and visualization of FHIR resources.

Results: The EBMonFHIR project created FHIR resources (ie, ArtifactAssessment , Citation , Evidence , EvidenceReport , and EvidenceVariable ) for representing evidence. The COVID-19 Knowledge Accelerator (COKA) project, now Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator (HEvKA), took this work further and created FHIR resources that express EvidenceReport , Citation , and ArtifactAssessment concepts. The group is (1) continually refining FHIR resources to support the representation of EBM; (2) developing controlled terminology related to EBM (ie, study design, statistic type, statistical model, and risk of bias); and (3) developing tools to facilitate the visualization and data entry of EBM information into FHIR resources, including human-readable interfaces and JSON viewers.

Conclusions: EBMonFHIR resources in conjunction with other FHIR resources can support relaying EBM components in a manner that is interoperable and consumable by downstream tools and health information technology systems to support the users of evidence.

Introduction

Background and significance.

Timely and relevant biomedical evidence is essential to provide high-quality health care. Decision makers rely on “synthesized evidence” from systematic reviews (SRs) and clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) to inform clinical care decisions and policies at multiple levels [ 1 - 7 ]. Therefore, actionable evidence is key for optimizing health care delivery and outcomes. Yet, with an estimated 75 clinical trials and 11 SRs published every day [ 8 ], efforts to synthesize, disseminate, and implement biomedical evidence throughout the evidence ecosystem to inform decision-making are unsustainable [ 9 ].

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is increasingly recognized as critical in the decision-making process related to patient care and policy development. EBM is “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” [ 10 ]. The practice of EBM depends on comprehensive and up-to-date synthesized research evidence, which requires continuous updating and reconciliation of new scientific results with previous results. For example, early trial results on prenatal steroids for preterm births were initially inconclusive, but evidence syntheses justified steroidal therapy as the best practice [ 11 - 14 ]. However, EBM practice is laborious, methodologically complex, and often error prone.

Multiple barriers hinder the effective and efficient use of evidence syntheses. First, the time and effort required to synthesize evidence often leads to SRs and CPGs being out of date by the time of their publication [ 15 , 16 ]. Even when synthesized evidence is available in digital form, it is typically in narrative form and accessed via a bibliographical database that requires proactive searching (eg, PubMed or a publisher), an email newsletter (eg, Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine Newsletter ), or social media notification (eg, X, formerly known as Twitter, or Doximity). These “pull” methods of synthesized evidence are helpful means of dissemination, but they do not facilitate more efficient “push” methods that promote use, implementation, and action at scale. Second, the common mode of evidence dissemination, which is human-readable text, is not standardized in ways that support technical solutions to scalable dissemination and implementation [ 15 - 19 ]. Despite notable past efforts for structuring and disseminating guidance, such as the GuideLine Interchange Format (GLIF) [ 20 , 21 ] and Standards-Based Sharable Active Guideline Environment (SAGE) [ 22 ] standards, there are no existing scalable and reusable computer-readable standards for distributing research results and synthesized evidence among creators, implementers, and the ultimate users of that evidence.

The current state is an ecosystem of researchers, informaticians, statisticians, policy makers, epidemiologists, librarians, and other stakeholders in the biomedical research community who synthesize evidence by manually searching for relevant studies, assessing the studies for quality and risk of bias, and compiling the results in labor-intensive ways. Evidence implementers, including CPG and clinical decision support (CDS) creators, whether they are creating or implementing local or third-party tools, must similarly review and verify the evidence before use. The challenges with finding and delivering evidence are amplified by needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic [ 23 - 28 ], where “scientists [have] published well over 100,000 articles about the coronavirus pandemic in 2020” [ 29 ] and for which there are currently over 2.5 million publications [ 30 ]. Today, these mostly manual, redundant, and disjointed processes seem to be the acknowledged status quo, even though new evidence continues to be generated at a rapid pace. The evidence synthesis ecosystem is, therefore, rife with duplication and uncoordinated efforts [ 31 , 32 ] for identifying, appraising, synthesizing, and disseminating evidence, requiring considerable resources, expertise, and time [ 33 , 34 ]. Evidence that is more rapidly updated, synthesized, disseminated, and implementable would improve both the delivery of EBM and evidence-based health care policy [ 4 , 35 ].

Computable Evidence

Solutions to improve the evidence-to-practice lifecycle [ 36 ] should begin with the transformation of study results into “computable evidence” or “knowledge artifacts” that could be consumed by software-based information systems. Key to computable evidence is knowledge representation in machine-interpretable formats that enable findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable [ 37 ] information across the evidence ecosystem. Figure 1 (adapted from the “Digital and Trustworthy Evidence Ecosystem” [ 38 ]) depicts this vision where research results at many stages throughout analysis, publication, and synthesis (the EBM on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources [EBMonFHIR] area) can be extracted and transformed from numerous disparate sources (such as registry reports, gray literature, preprints, and peer-reviewed literature databases) and stored as machine-readable evidence in an interoperable standard format that could then be used by a wide variety of evidence users and developers from biomedical knowledge bases (ie, evidence repositories) to SRs, CPGs, and CDS systems. Figure 1 also shows where related interoperability solutions [ 39 ] applied to CPG and CDS representation (the CPGonFHIR area), such as CDS Connect (a platform with a repository and authoring tool for CDS artifacts) [ 40 ] and CDS Hooks (a Health Level Seven [HL7] specification that provides a way to embed CDS services within the clinician workflow of an electronic health record) [ 41 ], can complete the evidence-to-practice implementation within the evidence ecosystem.

The EBMonFHIR Project

Built upon the success of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) [ 42 - 44 ] to promote interoperability and standards for data exchange, we initiated the EBMonFHIR project on May 16, 2018. The aim was to extend the methods and infrastructure of HL7 FHIR to provide an interoperability standard for the electronic exchange of biomedical knowledge from and about clinical research and recommendations [ 45 ]. We sought to stand on the shoulders of those who have previously made strides in structuring evidence and standardizing the means to share that evidence (eg, GLIF) by leveraging FHIR’s growing popularity and acceptance. The project solicits the participation of known experts and gathers input from broad communities in the evidence ecosystem to determine the data exchange needs for interoperable knowledge assets [ 45 ] and defines the FHIR resources related to the domain of clinical research evidence. We have begun showing that FHIR can deliver not just clinical data but also synthesized evidence and knowledge to end users.

Historical Context

The project started with implementers from EBSCO Health, Duodecim Medical Publications Ltd, HarmoniQ, and MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation and expanded to a multisector project with participation from academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations [ 46 ].

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced a new impetus in the quest to make biomedical evidence computable and interoperable. In light of the pandemic, where scientists and clinicians urgently needed timely results and evidence, the EBMonFHIR project leaders organized a larger group named the “COVID-19 Knowledge Accelerator (COKA) Initiative” and shifted their focus to the biomedical evidence regarding SARS-CoV-2 [ 47 ]. COKA is a nonprofit unincorporated organization with global collaboration to develop and advance interoperability standards for COVID-19 knowledge and to enhance the evidence exchange standards. As of January 2023, the COKA initiative was renamed to Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator (HEvKA) to better represent the group’s now broader scope that is inclusive of clinical, public health, and environmental health domains.

In this paper, we introduce the EBMonFHIR project that aims to produce an HL7 FHIR schema to express biomedical evidence as computable evidence—as well as FHIR resource instances, terminologies, and tools—and to promote an effective and efficient evidence ecosystem. We describe the participants involved in this effort, the process to develop the EBMonFHIR standards, and the progress made to represent evidence findings as FHIR resources. We also provide information on initial impacts, limitations, and next steps for stakeholders involved in standards and controlled terminology development, EBM implementation, and evidence used for both clinical studies and syntheses of those studies. We finally describe how others can get involved in the EBMonFHIR effort by way of the HEvKA initiative.

HEvKA is advancing EBMonFHIR according to the five aspects of the HL7 standards development process [ 48 ], and they are (1) foster consensus, (2) ensure content is fit for purpose, (3) ensure content is implementable, (4) establish an appropriate implementer community, and (5) ensure ongoing maintenance of the standard. Through up to 15 online meetings each week and up to 3 HL7 FHIR Connectathons [ 49 ] each year, HEvKA creates and refines FHIR resources to represent evidence from clinical studies and syntheses of those studies and develops tools to assist with the creation and visualization of FHIR resources.

Updates and improvements for any FHIR specification can be developed, proposed, reviewed, improved, voted on, and released within a documented environment in accordance with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-sanctioned HL7 ballot process, and ultimately published as part of the official HL7 FHIR specification. [ 50 ]

The FHIR resources that HEvKA develops are continuously revised and adapted to reflect the best representation of the knowledge from the community. The HL7 CDS Work Group [ 51 ] is responsible for evaluating and approving the additions and changes to these FHIR resources.

To support a culture of transparency and openness about the process of developing the FHIR resources and support tools, HEvKA makes use of numerous digital approaches to document and keep track of its activities and disseminate its progress, including the HL7 Confluence Web Page (content management) [ 45 ], Google Drive (content repository) [ 52 ], and Microsoft Teams (videoconference) [ 53 ]. The content produced is open-source and freely available to the community, with examples published on the Fast Evidence Interoperability Resources (FEvIR) Platform [ 54 ]. HEvKA also coordinates input and dissemination across many communities in the evidence ecosystem.

HEvKA has 14 active working groups that meet weekly to address different aspects of the project (ie, Communications; Computable EBM Tools Development; CQL Development; EBM Implementation Guide; Eligibility Criteria; Funding the Ecosystem Infrastructure; GRADE [Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation] Ontology; Measuring the Rate of Scientific Knowledge Transfer; Ontology Management; Project Management; Risk of Bias Terminology; Setting the Scientific Record on FHIR; Statistic Terminology; and StatisticsOnFHIR). For details, visit the Confluence web page for information about HEvKA [ 55 ].

EBM Representation With FHIR Resources

HEvKA first created FHIR resources for representing research results ( Evidence ) and variable definitions ( EvidenceVariable ); and after March 2020, HEvKA further created FHIR resources that express compositions ( EvidenceReport ), citations ( Citation ), and judgments about knowledge ( ArtifactAssessment ). To ease the readability of this article, we will broadly refer to these FHIR resources as the “EBMonFHIR Resources.” Table 1 shows the list of EBMonFHIR resources the project developed. From here on, we list FHIR resources, FHIR elements, and data types [ 56 ] in italics .

An Evidence resource [ 57 ] provides an expression of the most granular components of evidence. Evidence is often represented by values and parameters of statistical measures (eg, mean, confidence interval, relative risk, and hazard ratio) and expressions of certainty or classifications of these statistical findings. These statistics are about a particular combination of variables from a particular study, so the Evidence resource can refer to EvidenceVariable resources for definitions of the observed or intended variables. However, to support interoperability across systems, the Group resource [ 58 ] may be used instead of an EvidenceVariable resource [ 59 ], especially when referring to a group of people such as a population, sample, or subgroup.

The Evidence resource refers to statistical measures and their values with a machine-interpretable expression of a statistic, including the quantity; unit of measure; classification of statistic type; sample size; attribute estimates such as confidence intervals, P values, and heterogeneity estimates; and statistical model characteristics ( Figure 2 ). The statisticType element has, as of November 2, 2023, a suggested set of 22 possible codes [ 60 ], assembled by the HEvKA team, that represent types of statistics (eg, median, relative risk, and incidence rate ratio). HEvKA has drafted 139 terms for statistic types in total (these will eventually replace the Statistic Type Value Set).

Biomedical evidence is comprised of facts and interpretations derived from an analysis of observations of a selective sample. Certainty about any evidence may change due to methodological factors, statistical factors, and contextual factors, and for the relatedness between the sample, the evidence was derived from the population to which the evidence is applied. The certainty element provides a machine-interpretable expression of confidence in, or certainty or quality of, the evidence. The type subelement can express the aspect of the certainty being rated, using codable concepts from a suggested value set (eg, including the overall certainty, risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision, publication bias, dose-response gradient, plausible confounding, and large effect size [ 61 ]).

An EvidenceVariable resource [ 59 ] provides an expression of a single evidence variable (eg, a single exposure or a single outcome or measured variable).

The Citation resource “enables reference to any knowledge artifact for purposes of identification and attribution” [ 62 ], including “location, authorship, and contributorship to a journal article, report, document, resource, or other knowledge artifact” [ 62 ]. For instance, the Citation resource [ 63 ] is a reference to the Evidence resource [ 64 ], representing the primary outcome from an article reporting the results of a randomized clinical trial [ 65 ].

The EvidenceReport resource represents a “container for a collection of resources and codable concepts, adapted to support compositions of Evidence , EvidenceVariable , and Citation resources and related concepts” [ 66 ]. This resource may bundle knowledge from 1 or multiple studies [ 66 ]. The report can be represented in sections of different forms including text, references to codable concepts, or other FHIR resources and sections. The EvidenceReport resource is “suited for communicating reports about research and data analysis not specific to individual persons” [ 66 ], distinct from the FHIR Composition resource commonly used for reports specific to individual persons. However, the EvidenceReport resource will be deprecated as the Composition resource has been modified to include an EvidenceReport profile to support EBMonFHIR use.

The ArtifactAssessment resource “represents one or more assessments of another record or resource” [ 67 ]. This resource covers assessments about clinical records, health care provision, and records related to community knowledge (eg, evidence), and may include comments, corrections, classifications, ratings, questions, and responses.

a FHIR: Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.

b EBMonFHIR: Evidence-Based Medicine on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.

c HEvKA: Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator.

Terminologies

The use of controlled terminologies supports the interoperable representation of multiple concepts. In FHIR, controlled terminologies [ 68 ] are represented in code systems and value sets. Reporting a specific term in FHIR uses a Coding data type. The Coding data type includes a system element to identify the terminology system, a code element for the precise code for machine use, and a display element for human-readable expression. A CodeableConcept data type is “a value that is usually supplied by providing a reference to one or more terminologies or ontologies but may also be defined by the provision of text” [ 56 ]. A CodeableConcept element is composed of a coding element (with none, 1, or more instances) and a text element (with none or 1 instance).

The coding element of a CodeableConcept element can use a variety of terminologies, such as Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), RxNORM, and Identification of Medicinal Products (IDMP). FHIR has a noncomprehensive registry of external code systems [ 68 ]. New items can be proposed by the community, and implementers can choose to use other code systems not listed in the registry. Figure 3 shows a sample CodeableConcept element for the “Disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.”

HEvKA has used, developed, or extended over 40 terminologies for use with Evidence , EvidenceVariable , EvidenceReport , Citation , and ArtifactAssessment resources. Consolidation of several of these terminologies has resulted in HEvKA leading the effort to create a Scientific Evidence Code System (SEVCO) with nearly 600 terms for study design, risk of bias, and statistics [ 50 ]. Multimedia Appendix 1 presents a list of FHIR data elements with reference to controlled terminologies.

Walkthrough: Sample Study Result Represented With EBMonFHIR Resources

HEvKA tested the EBMonFHIR standard by conducting a successful proof-of-concept exercise that used the FHIR Evidence resource to represent a critically appraised summary of the primary outcome of a multi-platform randomized controlled trial (RCT) of anticoagulation for hospitalized noncritically ill patients with COVID-19 [ 69 ]. The primary outcome was “organ support–free days, evaluated on an ordinal scale that combined in-hospital death and the number of days free of cardiovascular or respiratory organ support up to day 21 among patients who survived to hospital discharge” [ 69 ]. The primary result for the overall group was reported as a median adjusted odds ratio of 1.27 (95% credible interval 1.03-1.58), with 939 (80.2%) out of 1171 in the therapeutic dose anticoagulation group and 801 (76.4%) out of 1048 in the usual-care thromboprophylaxis group. An overview of FHIR resources used to represent the appraisal of this outcome is shown in Table 2 . See the EBMonFHIR walkthrough [ 70 ] of this study with details about how the resources are used to represent the study including samples of JSON code to illustrate the EBM representation with FHIR resources.

a EBMonFHIR: Evidence-Based Medicine on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.

b NEJM: New England Journal of Medicine.

c FEvIR: Fast Evidence Interoperability Resources.

HEvKA is spearheading transformations and advances of EBMonFHIR on several fronts to support the process of exchanging biomedical evidence in a machine-readable format. As a continuously evolving effort, HEvKA has coordinated efforts and collaborated with industry, academia, government, and nonprofit organizations to develop EBMonFHIR resources and related tools, and has presented progress reports and results of the project to both EBM and informatics communities at several national and international events such as American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium, American Medical Informatics Association Informatics Summit, Guidelines International Network (GIN) Conference, Mobilizing Computable Biomedical Knowledge (MCBK), and Cochrane Colloquium.

Status and Maturity of Evidence-Related Standards

The EBMonFHIR standard contains five FHIR resources (ie, Evidence , EvidenceVariable , Citation , EvidenceReport , and ArtifactAssessment resources) and HEvKA is continually revising and refining the resources with support from members of the EBM community. Currently, the ArtifactAssessment , Citation , Evidence , and EvidenceVariable resources are at FHIR Maturity Level 1, “the artifact produces no warnings during the build process and the responsible WG has indicated that they consider the artifact substantially complete and ready for implementation” [ 77 ], whereas the EvidenceReport resource is at Maturity Level 0 (ie, Draft) and will be deprecated. Dedicated HEvKA working groups are developing functional examples to confirm and demonstrate the use of EBMonFHIR resources and data elements in various use cases. The examples are published on the FEvIR Platform [ 54 ]. In addition, following efforts for developing an implementation guide for representing evidence-based CPG recommendations [ 78 ], the EBMonFHIR project is producing an EBMonFHIR Implementation Guide [ 79 , 80 ] with 73 profiles of 12 resources to fully represent clinical research and evidence-based guidelines.

The Role of Controlled Terminologies

Communicating evidence in coded and structured forms requires controlled terminologies (or code systems) to uniquely and accurately express essential concepts. HEvKA created a Code System Development protocol to enable standardized terminologies for the exchange of scientific evidence [ 50 ]. This protocol is being executed to develop four code sets related to EBM: study design, statistic type, statistical model, and risk of bias.

Relatedly, the SEVCO Expert Working Group (an offshoot of HEvKA) has 39 members from 18 countries as of November 3, 2023. SEVCO has identified 23 commonly used tools and methods for what the code system will support, such as the ROBINS-I tool for risk of bias assessment [ 81 ]. As of this writing, there are 602 prospective terms (253 for risk of bias, 76 for study design, and 273 for statistics) to support all recognized commonly used tools and systems. Coordination with the GRADE Working Group, a collaboration to develop a common and transparent approach to grading quality (or certainty) of evidence and strength of recommendations, is underway to support a GRADE Ontology.

Tools for End Users

HEvKA participants have developed tools to facilitate the visualization and data entry of evidence into EBMonFHIR resources, including human-readable interfaces and JSON viewers. The tools are integrated into the FEvIR Platform [ 54 ], and include intuitive forms, purposefully created to not require manual JSON coding or working knowledge of FHIR, for viewing and building Citation , Evidence , EvidenceVariable , and Group resources; for viewing and building multiple profiles of Composition resource ( Guideline , Recommendation , SummaryOfFindings ); for viewing and building multiple profiles of ArtifactAssessment resource ( Classification , Rating , RiskOfBiasAssessment , and RecommendationJustification ); and automated converters to translate data from MEDLINE, RIS, ClinicalTrials.gov, and MAGICapp into the FHIR specification. The viewing of resources created with these tools is open without an account, but an account (at no cost) is required to create content.

This environment may reduce the time spent on SR evidence gathering. The laborious process of searching for articles and screening them by hand could be automated because the search query would be expressed in the “language” of EBMonFHIR and judgments made by previous searchers (such as population classification) can be recorded for reuse. Similarly, automated tools could be used to update evidence within SRs rather than relying on manual updates.

With data available in the “language” of EBMonFHIR, it will become easier to develop tools to analyze and process scientific knowledge. Automated meta-analysis tools could be developed based on the recognition of Evidence resources with matching variableDefinition element content and processing algorithms mapped to the structured statistic content. Tools to accelerate original research will also be developed, such as tools to match clinical trials with potentially eligible patients [ 82 ].

The ArtifactAssessment resource can also be used to represent the quality or certainty of the evidence itself. The EBMonFHIR Implementation Guide includes a CertaintyOfEvidence element profile for this purpose. There is also a DatasetCitation element Profile of the Citation resource, and an ArtifactAssessment resource referencing a DatasetCitation element can be used to represent the data quality.

Conclusions

Continuously identifying, synthesizing, and incorporating evidence into care are the key tasks of medical knowledge management, yet they are also prohibitively labor-intensive. HEvKA has taken approaches to standardize and eventually automate these tasks through its efforts around EBMonFHIR, an HL7 standard for making biomedical evidence computable. EBMonFHIR will be used for enabling seamless data flow between published evidence reports, repositories, SR authoring tools, and guideline development tools; automating the searching and matching of evidence with any subgroups of patients; connecting individual patient data with medical knowledge for computerized CDS; and providing individualized effect estimates for different outcomes to facilitate shared decision-making. EBMonFHIR resources in conjunction with other FHIR resources can support relaying EBM components in a manner that is interoperable and consumable by downstream tools and health information systems to support evidence users (eg, creators of biomedical knowledge bases, CPGs, CDS artifacts, and SRs). Anyone may join HEvKA to engage a community of FHIR users and committed volunteers to accelerate the development and implementation of standards for evidence exchange.

Acknowledgments

Health Level Seven (HL7) and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) are the registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International and their use of these trademarks does not constitute an endorsement by HL7. Evidence-Based Medicine on FHIR (EBMonFHIR) is an HL7 project. We would like to thank all members of the EBMonFHIR and COVID-19 Knowledge Accelerator (COKA) or Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator (HEvKA) projects who contributed to the design and development of the FHIR resources to support EBM, and Janice Tufte for reviewing from a lay perspective. We would like to acknowledge the Data Science to Patient Value (D2V) initiative at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. This paper was written on behalf of Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator (HEvKA).

Authors' Contributions

All authors contributed to the conceptualization, writing—review and editing, and approval of the submitted paper and will be accountable for its contents. AS and BA performed supervision. AS, JD, KS, and BSA performed data curation. AS, LMS, BK, VS, JD, KS, MA, and BSA performed investigation and methodology. HPL contributed to methodology. AS, JD, and BSA handled project administration. KS and BSA managed resource and software. JD managed software. BK, JD, and BSA conducted validation. AS, BK, VS, JD, KS, and BSA performed visualization. AS, LMS, JR, BK, JD, MA, and BSA wrote the original draft. Classification based on the CRediT taxonomy.

Conflicts of Interest

BSA owns Computable Publishing LLC and leads the Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator (HEvKA) and Evidence-Based Medicine on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (EBMonFHIR) projects. JD and KS are employees of Computable Publishing LLC. BSA, KS, JD, MA, BK, HPL, KAR, VS, and IK are board members of the Scientific Knowledge Accelerator Foundation (SKAF). AS, LMS, and JR have no disclosures to report.

List of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) data elements with reference to controlled terminologies introduced by the Evidence-Based Medicine on FHIR (EBMonFHIR) project.

• Wallace BC, Trikalinos TA, Lau J, Brodley C, Schmid CH. Semi-automated screening of biomedical citations for systematic reviews. BMC Bioinformatics. 2010;11:55. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Miwa M, Thomas J, O'Mara-Eves A, Ananiadou S. Reducing systematic review workload through certainty-based screening. J Biomed Inform. 2014;51:242-253. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Becker M, Jaschinski T, Eikermann M, Mathes T, Bühn S, Koppert W, et al. A systematic decision-making process on the need for updating clinical practice guidelines proved to be feasible in a pilot study. J Clin Epidemiol. 2018;96:101-109. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Middleton B, Sittig DF, Wright A. Clinical decision support: a 25 year retrospective and a 25 year vision. Yearb Med Inform. 2016;25(Suppl 1):S103-S116. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Rosenfeld RM, Shiffman RN. Clinical practice guideline development manual: a quality-driven approach for translating evidence into action. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2009;140(6 Suppl 1):S1-S43. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Murad MH. Clinical practice guidelines: a primer on development and dissemination. Mayo Clin Proc. 2017;92(3):423-433. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Therasse P. From clinical trials to evidence-based medicine: how to build the evidence! Eur J Cancer Suppl. 2003;1(6):55-65. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ]
• Bastian H, Glasziou P, Chalmers I. Seventy-five trials and eleven systematic reviews a day: how will we ever keep up? PLoS Med. 2010;7(9):e1000326. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Boutron I, Créquit P, Williams H, Meerpohl J, Craig JC, Ravaud P. Future of evidence ecosystem series: 1. introduction evidence synthesis ecosystem needs dramatic change. J Clin Epidemiol. 2020;123:135-142. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Sackett DL. Evidence-based medicine. Semin Perinatol. 1997;21(1):3-5. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Wapner RJ, Waters T. Introduction and historical perspective. Clin Obstet Gynecol. 2003;46(1):125-131. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Crowley P, Chalmers I, Keirse MJ. The effects of corticosteroid administration before preterm delivery: an overview of the evidence from controlled trials. Br J Obstet Gynaecol. 1990;97(1):11-25. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Crowley PA. Antenatal corticosteroid therapy: a meta-analysis of the randomized trials, 1972 to 1994. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1995;173(1):322-335. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Briceño-Pérez C, Reyna-Villasmil E, Vigil-De-Gracia P. Antenatal corticosteroid therapy: historical and scientific basis to improve preterm birth management. Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol. 2019;234:32-37. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Shekelle PG, Ortiz E, Rhodes S, Morton SC, Eccles MP, Grimshaw JM, et al. Validity of the agency for healthcare research and quality clinical practice guidelines: how quickly do guidelines become outdated? JAMA. 2001;286(12):1461-1467. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Shojania KG, Sampson M, Ansari MT, Ji J, Doucette S, Moher D. How quickly do systematic reviews go out of date? A survival analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2007;147(4):224-233. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Winters BD, Bharmal A, Wilson RF, Zhang A, Engineer L, Defoe D, et al. Validity of the agency for health care research and quality patient safety indicators and the centers for medicare and medicaid hospital-acquired conditions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Med Care. 2016;54(12):1105-1111. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Hulse NC, Rocha RA, Del Fiol G, Bradshaw RL, Hanna TP, Roemer LK. KAT: a flexible XML-based knowledge authoring environment. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2005;12(4):418-430. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Akl EA, Meerpohl JJ, Elliott J, Kahale LA, Schünemann HJ, Living Systematic Review Network. Living systematic reviews: 4. living guideline recommendations. J Clin Epidemiol. 2017;91:47-53. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Boxwala AA, Peleg M, Tu S, Ogunyemi O, Zeng QT, Wang D, et al. GLIF3: a representation format for sharable computer-interpretable clinical practice guidelines. J Biomed Inform. 2004;37(3):147-161. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Peleg M. Computer-interpretable clinical guidelines: a methodological review. J Biomed Inform. 2013;46(4):744-763. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Tu SW, Campbell JR, Glasgow J, Nyman MA, McClure R, McClay J, et al. The SAGE guideline model: achievements and overview. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2007;14(5):589-598. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Tse EG, Klug DM, Todd MH. Open science approaches to COVID-19. F1000Res. 2020;9:1043. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• McCartney M. COVID-19: has EBM been replaced by hype-based medicine? Drug Ther Bull. 2020;58(7):99-100. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Romiti GF, Corica B, Cangemi R, Basili S, Raparelli V. Need for innovative and timely synthesis of evidence during COVID-19 outbreak. Eur J Intern Med. 2020;77:165-166. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Atallah ÁN. COVID-19: better trustworthiness of clinical evidence through clinical trials and systematic reviews. Sao Paulo Med J. 2020;138(3):171-173. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Bero LA. Producing independent, systematic review evidence: cochrane's response to COVID-19. Am J Public Health. 2020;110(7):952-953. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Laine C, Taichman DB, Guallar E, Mulrow CD. Keeping up with emerging evidence in (Almost) real time. Ann Intern Med. 2020;173(2):153-154. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Else H. How a torrent of COVID science changed research publishing—in seven charts. Nature. 2020;588(7839):553. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Covid-19 report. Google Data Studio. URL: https:/​/lookerstudio.​google.com/​reporting/​70fdce85-1b53-4605-8698-839b66c 8010b/​page/​JwhJB?feature=opengraph [accessed 2024-06-11]
• Dunn AG, Bourgeois FT. Is it time for computable evidence synthesis? J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2020;27(6):972-975. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Alper BS, Richardson JE, Lehmann HP, Subbian V. It is time for computable evidence synthesis: the COVID-19 knowledge accelerator initiative. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2020;27(8):1338-1339. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Thomas J, Noel-Storr A, Marshall I, Wallace B, McDonald S, Mavergames C, et al. Living systematic reviews: 2. combining human and machine effort. J Clin Epidemiol. 2017;91:31-37. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• O'Mara-Eves A, Thomas J, McNaught J, Miwa M, Ananiadou S. Using text mining for study identification in systematic reviews: a systematic review of current approaches. Syst Rev. 2015;4(1):5. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Elliott J, Lawrence R, Minx JC, Oladapo OT, Ravaud P, Jeppesen BT, et al. Decision makers need constantly updated evidence synthesis. Nature. 2021;600(7889):383-385. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Lang ES, Wyer PC, Haynes RB. Knowledge translation: closing the evidence-to-practice gap. Ann Emerg Med. 2007;49(3):355-363. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Wilkinson MD, Dumontier M, Aalbersberg IJJ, Appleton G, Axton M, Baak A, et al. The FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data. 2016;3(1):160018. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Evidence Ecosystem. MAGIC Evidence Ecosystem Foundation. URL: https://www.magicevidence.org/evidence-ecosystem [accessed 2024-06-11]
• Taber P, Radloff C, Del Fiol G, Staes C, Kawamoto K. New standards for clinical decision support: a survey of the state of implementation. Yearb Med Inform. 2021;30(1):159-171. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• CDS connect. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. URL: https://cds.ahrq.gov/cdsconnect [accessed 2023-01-16]
• CDS hooks. HL7 and Boston Children's Hospital. URL: https://cds-hooks.hl7.org/ [accessed 2023-01-16]
• Lehne M, Luijten S, Imbusch PVFG, Thun S. The use of FHIR in digital health—a review of the scientific literature. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2019;267:52-58. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Jaffe C, Mandel J, Sartin S, Posnack S, Overhage JM, Tripathi M. W09: FHIR -- implementing the HL7 interoperability platform: a community of implementers for research, patient care, and value-based care. 2019. Presented at: AMIA 2019 Annual Symposium; November 16-20, 2019; Washington DC. URL: https://symposium2019.zerista.com/event/member/602305
• FHIR v4.0.1. HL7® FHIR® Release 4. URL: http://hl7.org/fhir/R4/index.html [accessed 2024-05-17]
• EBMonFHIR—clinical decision support—confluence. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/cds/ebmonfhir [accessed 2021-03-28]
• HL7 searchable project index—FHIR resources for evidence-based medicine knowledge assets (EBMonFHIR). HL7 International. URL: https:/​/www.​hl7.org/​special/​Committees/​projman/​searchableProjectIndex.​cfm?action=edit&ProjectNum ber=1422 [accessed 2021-04-05]
• COVID-19 Knowledge Accelerator (COKA)—clinical decision support—confluence. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=97468919 [accessed 2021-03-29]
• Understanding the standards process—HL7—confluence. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/HL7/Understanding+the+Standards+Process [accessed 2022-08-10]
• FHIR Connectathons. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/FHIR/Connecta thons [accessed 2023-01-16]
• Alper BS, Dehnbostel J, Afzal M, Subbian V, Soares A, Kunnamo I, et al. Making science computable: developing code systems for statistics, study design, and risk of bias. J Biomed Inform. 2021;115:103685. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Clinical decision support workgroup—confluence. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/CDS/WorkGroup+Home [accessed 2021-06-29]
• Personal cloud storage and file sharing platform—Google. Google Drive. URL: https://www.google.com/drive/ [accessed 2023-01-16]
• Video conferencing, meetings, calling. Microsoft Teams. URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group -chat-software [accessed 2023-01-16]
• FEvIR platform. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/ [accessed 2024-03-27]
• HEvKA-Health Evidence Knowledge Accelerator—clinical decision support—confluence. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/CDS/HEvKA-Health+Evidence+Knowledge+Accelerator [accessed 2023-01-16]
• Datatypes—FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. HL7®FHIR® FHIR CI-Build. URL: https://build.fhir.org/datatypes.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• Evidence. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/evidence.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• Group. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/group.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• EvidenceVariable. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/evidencevariable.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• Valueset-statistic-type. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/valueset-statistic-type.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• Valueset-certainty-type. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/valueset-certainty-type.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• Citation. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/citation.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR citation—citation for FEvIR evidence 7637: critically appraised summary of primary outcome of multi-platform RCT of anticoagulation for non-critically ill COVID-19. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/Citation/7638 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR evidence—critically appraised summary of primary outcome of multi-platform RCT of anticoagulation for non-critically ill patients with COVID-19. FEvIR Platform. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/Evidence/7637 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• RECOVERY Collaborative Group, Horby P, Lim WS, Emberson JR, Mafham M, Bell JL, et al. Dexamethasone in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. N Engl J Med. 2021;384(8):693-704. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• EvidenceReport. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/evidencereport.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• ArtifactAssessment. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/artifactassessment.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• Terminologies-systems. FHIR v6.0.0-cibuild. URL: https://build.fhir.org/terminologies-systems.html [accessed 2023-11-02]
• ATTACC Investigators, ACTIV-4a Investigators, REMAP-CAP Investigators, Lawler PR, Goligher EC, Berger JS, et al. Therapeutic anticoagulation with heparin in noncritically ill patients with COVID-19. N Engl J Med. 2021;385(9):790-802. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• EBMonFHIR walkthrough. Atlassian Confluence Community License. URL: https://confluence.hl7.org/display/CDS/EBM onFHIR+Walkthrough [accessed 2023-11-03]
• FEvIR citation—anticoagulation for COVID-19 combined RCTs in NEJM. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/Citation/7636 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR EvidenceVariable—therapeutic-dose anticoagulation with heparin. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/EvidenceVariable/7751 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR EvidenceVariable—usual-care pharmacologic thromboprophylaxis. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/EvidenceVariable/7752 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR EvidenceVariable—organ support-free days. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/EvidenceVariable/7753 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR Group—patients who are hospitalized for COVID-19 and who are not critically ill. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/Group/7749 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FEvIR Group—participants in anticoagulation for COVID-19 combined (ATTACC, ACTIV-4a, and REMAP-CAP) RCT (hospitalized, not critically ill). FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/Group/7750 [accessed 2023-11-02]
• FHIR maturity model. Health Level Seven International. URL: https://wiki.hl7.org/FHIR_Maturity_Model [accessed 2021-07-30]
• Lichtner G, Alper BS, Jurth C, Spies C, Boeker M, Meerpohl JJ, et al. Representation of evidence-based clinical practice guideline recommendations on FHIR. J Biomed Inform. 2023;139:104305. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• FEvIR project—evidence based medicine implementation guide. FEvIR Platf. URL: https://fevir.net/resources/Project/29736 [accessed 2024-03-27]
• Evidence based medicine on FHIR implementation guide v1.0.0-ballot. HL7 International. URL: https://build.fhir.org/ig/HL7/ebm/index.html [accessed 2024-03-27]
• Sterne JA, Hernán MA, Reeves BC, Savović J, Berkman ND, Viswanathan M, et al. ROBINS-I: a tool for assessing risk of bias in non-randomised studies of interventions. BMJ. 2016;355:i4919. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Alper BS, Dehnbostel J, Shahin K, Ojha N, Khanna G, Tignanelli CJ. Striking a match between FHIR-based patient data and FHIR-based eligibility criteria. Learn Health Syst. 2023;7(4):e10368. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]

Abbreviations

Edited by G Tsafnat; submitted 03.11.23; peer-reviewed by S Thun, C Vorisek; comments to author 22.03.24; revised version received 04.04.24; accepted 06.04.24; published 25.06.24.

©Andrey Soares, Lisa M Schilling, Joshua Richardson, Bhagvan Kommadi, Vignesh Subbian, Joanne Dehnbostel, Khalid Shahin, Karen A Robinson, Muhammad Afzal, Harold P Lehmann, Ilkka Kunnamo, Brian S Alper. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 25.06.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (ISSN 1438-8871), is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

Research/Study Research/Study

Inside Project 2025's attack on reproductive rights: Mifepristone and alternative abortion pills

Special Programs Abortion Rights & Reproductive Health

Written by Sophie Lawton , Jacina Hollins-Borges & Jack Wheatley

Published 06/24/24 1:30 PM EDT

At least 31 partner organizations of the Project 2025 initiative have published written content, supported legal efforts, or had organizational leadership make comments against the use of safe and effective abortion pills, specifically mifepristone, according to a Media Matters review. 

Project 2025 is organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, and has laid out a radical plan for governance during the next Republican administration. The initiative's wide-ranging policy proposals, including extreme anti-abortion policies, are laid out in its “ Mandate for Leadership .” 

The policy book includes a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services written by Roger Severino, husband of anti-abortion figure Carrie Severino. The chapter lays out policies against the use and distribution of abortion pills, advising the next Republican administration to heavily restrict access to mifepristone and so-called “mail-order abortions” through various means. 

Later in the policy book, America First Legal’s Gene Hamilton recommends that the Department of Justice should take steps to enforce the Comstock Act as a way to limit the distribution of abortion pills. In these passages, Project 2025 lays out a plan for the next Republican administration to criminalize the shipment of abortion pills and cut off huge swaths of Americans from accessing this lifeline of reproductive healthcare. 

Anti-choice organizations have been waging a legal battle against mifepristone for years, culminating in the ongoing Supreme Court case, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , in which anti-choice groups challenge the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000 and attempt to reinstate stricter rules around prescribing the drug that were in place prior to 2016. 

Project 2025 partner the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF) is behind the anti-choice “Alliance” along with Project 2025 partner, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG). A number of other Project 2025 partner organizations have signed letters, filed amicus briefs, or otherwise supported these efforts. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case in March, and reportedly appeared skeptical of the plaintiffs’ right to sue, which would suggest the justices could rule in a way that allows mifepristone to remain broadly available. 

Organizations affiliated with Project 2025 use misinformation and scare tactics to push for restrictions, if not outright bans, of abortion pills despite evidence that they are safe and effective , even after regulations on prescribing the medication were eased in 2021. Some of the organizations argue that expanded access to abortion pills will result in the use of the drug by abusive partners or sex traffickers. Mother Jones recently  debunked the claim that telehealth abortion facilitates intimate partner violence. There has also been pushback against the idea that access to abortion pills negatively impacts victims of trafficking.

At least seven of the organizations partnered with Project 2025 have also promoted and helped advance legislation to force doctors to offer bogus “abortion reversal” treatment. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states , “Medication abortion ‘reversal’ is not supported by science. 

For the full report on Project 2025's attack on reproductive rights, click here .

Select a Partner Organization

The heritage foundation, 1792 exchange, alliance defending freedom , american association of pro-life obstetricians and gynecologists, aclj action, the american conservative, american family association, america first legal, american principles project, americans united for life, amac action, california family council, center for family and human rights, center for renewing america, concerned women for america, discovery institute, eagle forum, ethics and public policy center, family policy alliance, family research council, first liberty institute, the frederick douglass foundation, the heartland institute, dr. james dobson family institute, media research center, the national center for public policy research and project 21 black leadership network, students for life of america, susan b. anthony pro-life america, texas public policy foundation, turning point usa, young america’s foundation.

• In an article about the Supreme Court case on the FDA’s mifepristone regulations, senior legal fellow Thomas Jipping claims abortion pills are “dangerous drugs.” Jipping opened the piece saying that “abortion poisons everything it touches,” and goes on to argue that the FDA violated the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law considered “dead” by some in Congress who support its repeal. [The Heritage Foundation, 1/17/24 ; The Hill, 4/2/24 ]
• In a post on X, The Heritage Foundation wrote, “Think the abortion pill is safe? Think again.”  [Twitter/X, 12/13/23 ]
• The Heritage Foundation hosted a panel on abortion pills moderated by Perry that included Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist, and CEO of AAPLOG Christina Francis. Francis claimed that mifepristone users visit the emergency room more often than those who get surgical abortions, even claiming up to 35% of chemical abortions result in an ER visit. These claims are the same as those from a retracted 2021 study. Francis repeated this claim later in the panel stating abortion drugs have “high complication rates.” [YouTube, 11/13/23 ,  11/13/23 ; Salon, 3/20/24 ]
• In a piece celebrating the U.S. District Court ruling against both the initial approval of the drug and the FDA’s relaxation of mifepristone regulations, Perry called Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s opinion a “recognition of the dangers of mifepristone to both mother and child.” [The Heritage Foundation, 8/13/23 ]
• In a 2023 post on X, Heritage stated “FACT: The abortion pill poses serious health risks to women. The FDA should never have authorized it.” [Twitter/X, 3/20/23 ]
• In another article by Perry on the Heritage site, she claimed states can use “police power to restrict or prohibit abortion—including particular methods of abortion, such as by pill.” [The Heritage Foundation, 2/22/23 ]
• Perry wrote in a 2023 article that states should be working to ban abortion drugs, despite the FDA calling them “safe and effective.” She also claimed the Supreme Court overturning Roe means “states can close off chemical abortions altogether.” [The Heritage Foundation, 1/11/23 ]
• In an article on the Heritage site about the Biden administration allowing pharmacies to distribute mifepristone, visiting fellow Melanie Israel wrote that “abortion pills aren’t safe.” [The Heritage Foundation, 1/6/23 ]
• In 2022, The Heritage Foundation published a coalition letter to members of Congress in an effort to “legislate abortion policy at the federal level.” The letter called on the federal government to “limit the interstate flow of dangerous abortion drugs” and falsely claimed abortion pills put “women’s health and safety at risk.” The letter was also signed by other Project 2025 partner organizations including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Americans United for Life, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Concerned Women for America. [The Heritage Foundation, 12/4/22 ]
• Right-wing nonprofit 1792 Exchange wrote in its corporate bias rating report on CVS Health that the company is “high risk” because it continued to dispense mifepristone at some pharmacies in spite of a related wrongful termination lawsuit from a former employee. 1792 Exchange also criticized CVS Health because it supposedly “pushes for the use of abortion-inducing drugs across the country.” [1792 Exchange, accessed 4/16/24 ]
• Along with other anti-abortion medical groups and doctors, Alliance Defending Freedom is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the FDA to limit access to mifepristone. [The Guardian, 5/17/23 ]
• ADF has defended plaintiffs in at least 22 cases in 10 states and the District of Columbia which challenged the Obama-era requirement for employers to provide insurance that covers mifepristone and other reproductive care. [ADF, accessed  4/18/24 ]
• ADF intervened to defend a nurse practitioner named Chelsea Mynyk who offered abortion pill reversal in Colorado in spite of a state law barring the protocol, arguing that “by banning Chelsea from providing this care, Colorado is violating her religious freedom.” [ADF, 4/12/24 ]
• In a piece that criticized retail pharmacies dispensing mifepristone, ADF senior counsel Erin Morrow Hawley wrote that looser restrictions on the medication “all but ensure the abortion drug will be unsafe for many women, ubiquitous, and routinely mailed into states where it is unlawful.” She added that CVS and Walgreens have removed “important safeguards on abortion drugs.” [ADF, 3/26/24 ]
• ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner said that the data on mifepristone “suggests that it endangers women.” [Politico, 3/25/24 ,  11/18/22 ]
• In an article titled “The FDA’s Unforgivable Deceptions on Chemical-Abortion Drugs,” Hawley wrote that “no one should be okay with the FDA leaving pregnant women to take these high-risk drugs all alone.” She then urged the Supreme Court to “put the health and well-being of pregnant women first by reinstating necessary safeguards for abortion drugs.” [ADF, 3/15/24 ]
• In a piece titled “What the FDA Hasn’t Told You About Mifepristone,” ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist claimed that “the FDA has ignored” that abortion pills “can cause significant and serious complications.” [ADF, 3/14/23 ]
• The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists is a plaintiff in the Alliance Defending Freedom’s lawsuit against the FDA to suspend the use of mifepristone. [Washington State Standard, 2/6/24 ]
• AAPLOG runs a program called “Abortion Pill Reversal” that invites “pro-life medical professionals” to “provide urgent care to women who regret starting medication abortions.” The idea of reversing an abortion pill’s effect with progesterone is not supported by science. A 2012 study on the protocol had just six participants and no control group, and was not supervised or reviewed. A later 2020 study was ended early “due to safety concerns among the participants.” In its statement on abortion pill reversal, the organization included statistics on serious complications from abortion medication and referred to reversal as “another reproductive choice for women facing the abortion decision.” It repeatedly emphasizes that abortions are reversed with a “natural hormone.” [AAPLOG, accessed  4/17/24 ,  2019 ; ACOG, accessed 4/19/24 ]
• In response to efforts to ban abortion “reversal” treatments in Colorado, AAPLOG released a statement which said: “Efforts by abortion proponents to outlaw progesterone therapy after mifepristone consumption are not based on science or good medical ethics.” [AAPLOG, 9/27/23 ; Reuters, 10/23/23 ]
• AAPLOG often attacks mifepristone as a way for “abusers and traffickers” to easily coerce patients into abortion. In a response to the Fifth Circuit of Appeals ruling to reinstate restrictions on mifepristone, AAPLOG wrote that the previous “deregulations have placed women and girls at greater risk of life-threatening complications, as well as coerced abortion by abusers and traffickers.” [APPLOG, 8/16/23 ]
• In a “Myth vs. Fact” piece on “maternal medical care,” AAPLOG wrote that “the dangerous push in recent years to dispense abortion pills through the mail or without a doctor’s visit presents a grave threat to women’s health.” [AAPLOG, 8/29/22 ]
• Now-CEO Christina Francis warned in 2021 of “mounting evidence of significant adverse events and maternal deaths” from mifepristone in a piece originally published by Deseret News. [AAPLOG, 5/18/21 ; Salt Lake Tribune, 11/18/23 ]
• Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, AAPLOG argued through letters, press releases, and articles that mifepristone is dangerous. [AAPLOG, 1/25/10 ]
• ACLJ’s Jay and Jordan Sekulow called mifepristone “deadly abortion pills” while describing the organization’s position in U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. [ACLJ, 6/22/23 ]
• In a piece explaining why the organization filed an amicus brief in that case, ACLJ senior counsel Walter M. Weber wrote that “mailing abortion pills is an act of racketeering that violates the federal RICO statute.” The ACLJ’s brief asked the court “to uphold an injunction against federal approval of abortion pills and against federal loosening of restrictions on abortion pills.” [ACLJ, 5/12/23 ; U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , Brief of Amicus Curiae, 5/09/23 ]
• The American Conservative celebrated U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , saying that banning access to mifepristone would be “a major blow to abortion activists’ cause” and would create precedent to change “an untouchable federal agency.” Contributing editor Carmel Richardson wrote that the anti-abortion movement “has been all but apologizing for” overturning Roe v. Wade “at the ballot box ever since,” but the possibility of a mifepristone ban is a “positive step forward.” [The American Conservative, 5/19/23 ]
• After the Supreme Court said that mifepristone should stay broadly available as the case is litigated, Richardson called on Congress to ban abortion, “including a ban on drugs prescribed for the purpose of inducing the death of a pre-born child.” [The American Conservative, 4/28/23 ]
• Richardson has also claimed that mifepristone is dangerous for patients, writing that “the lives of unborn babies, and those of several of their mothers” are at stake in the mifepristone case. [The American Conservative, 4/14/23 ]
• American Family Association’s news outlet, American Family News, published an article on the Louisiana law categorizing mifepristone as a controlled dangerous substance that called the drug “Fetus-killing abortion pills” and failed to include that the law will likely inhibit access to the drug and ensure harsher penalties for people who obtain it without a prescription. The piece misleadingly implies the new law would mainly be used to punish people for “misusing” the drugs by coercing a pregnant person to take them or slipping it unknowingly to a pregnant person. [American Family News, 5/28/24 ; CNN, 5/24/24 ]
• Jordan Chamblee, a writer for American Family Association’s publication The Stand, claimed that the Biden administration paving the way for retail pharmacies to dispense abortion pills is “prioritizing the interests of the abortion industry over women’s health and safety.” He claimed that “chemical abortions are dangerous,” as they “can result in serious complications such as sepsis, hemorrhaging, and even death.” Chamblee also promoted The Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN), which offers abortion pill reversal. [American Family Association, 4/10/23 ]
• After the FDA allowed mifepristone to be dispensed by mail, AFA Executive Vice President Ed Vitagliano said that this promoted “an agenda of wanton destruction eliminating tens of thousands of people who would become innovators and creators.” [American Family Association, 12/20/21 ]
• An AFA article criticized abortion clinics for not advertising the existence of abortion reversal, and claimed that they “fail to inform their patients about what to expect after they take the pill and leave the clinic.” [American Family Association, 7/15/19 ]
• Project 2025 contributor and vice president of America First Legal Gene Hamilton, who wrote the section of Mandate for Leadership on the Department of Justice, pushed in that section to enforce the Comstock Act, which could be used to restrict abortion medication nationwide. [Rolling Stone, 12/22/23 ; Teen Vogue, 2/7/24 ]
• The American Principles Project backed the bill of Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) and Kevin Hern (R-OK) to tighten restrictions on mifepristone, with the APP's President Terry Schilling arguing that easier access to abortion pills means dispensing “dangerous pills online” and “empowering abusers by making it even easier for them to get their hands on abortion drugs.” [Website of Rep. Diana Harshbarger, 1/18/23 ]
• On Twitter, APP shared an article promoting abortion pill reversal: “#Abortion Pill Reversal: When ‘Pro-Choicers’ Don’t Support a Woman’s Choice.” [Twitter/X, 9/14/17 ]
• During the Obama administration, APP celebrated the fight against what it calls “the abortion pill mandate,” the Department of Health and Human Services requirement for employers to provide insurance that covers abortion pills. [Twitter/X, 3/6/13 ,  7/10/12 ]
• Americans United for Life federal policy director Jesse Southerland told Politico that fighting against “chemical abortion” is a “priority” for the organization. [Politico, 3/27/24 ]
• AUL drafted a model law for anti-abortion lawmakers to restrict or ban telehealth prescriptions for abortion pills. [Politico, 3/27/24 ; Stateline, 1/30/23 ]
• In February, AUL filed two amicus briefs in support of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in its case against the FDA. [Americans United for Life, 2/29/24 ]
• AUL listed the court battle to re-restrict mifepristone as one of its “top ten developments in the Life arena of 2023.” [Americans United for Life, 12/20/23 ]
• Chief legal officer and general counsel of AUL Steven H. Aden said that loosening regulations on mifepristone “has been a healthcare disaster for women and has normalized the wholesale destruction of human life.” [Americans United for Life, 12/13/23 ]
• AUL filed multiple amicus briefs to the Fifth Circuit asking the court to uphold the U.S. District Court’s suspension of mifepristone’s approval. Aden, the counsel of record on the brief, explained that abortion pills are “dangerous drugs,” and suspending them “is in the interest of patient welfare.” AUL has made similar arguments in several pieces on its amicus briefs regarding this case. [Americans United for Life, 5/16/23 ,  4/18/23 ,  4/12/23 ]
• Carolyn McDonnell, litigation counsel at AUL, accused the FDA of “promoting its radical abortion agenda at the expense of patient health and safety” by relaxing mifepristone restrictions. [Americans United for Life, 2/13/23 ]
• AUL submitted testimony in support of Wyoming’s attempt to ban abortion pills partially because it was “consistent with the American legal tradition on abortion.” In its related explainer on mifepristone, AUL emphasized possible complications resulting from consumption of the drug. [Americans United for Life, 2/9/23 ; The Associated Press, 6/22/23 ]
• AUL wrote that receiving mifepristone through the mail is the “new back-alley,” as patients are receiving pills “from a stranger on the internet.” The piece emphasized that “women have died taking chemical abortion pills.” [Americans United for Life, 12/17/21 ]
• In 2021, AUL celebrated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive order to ban abortion pills from being prescribed via telemedicine, calling it a measure “to protect South Dakota women from the threat of chemical abortion drugs.” [Americans United for Life, 9/7/21 ]
• In the same piece, the organization attributed relaxed restrictions on mifepristone to “corporate greed.” Similarly, in 2016, AUL said that “abortion industry profits” were the motivator behind the updated guidelines. [Americans United for Life, 9/7/21 ; 11/1/16 ]
• After the FDA loosened restrictions on mifepristone in 2021, AUL accused the agency of “playing politics with women’s health.” In another piece on the issue, it said the FDA was “abandoning women to suffer through the physical and psychological impact of chemical abortion without medical supervision or support.” [Americans United for Life, 4/13/21 ,  1/12/21 ]
• In 2017, AUL’s vice president of legal affairs, Denise Burke, testified in favor of a Colorado law that would require abortion providers to tell patients about abortion reversal, which it calls “informed consent.” According to Burke, because they are not told about so-called abortion reversal, “many women are physically and psychologically harmed by the abortion process.” [Americans United for Life, 2/9/17 ]
• AUL called on state lawmakers to repeal what it called a “discriminatory rule” and an “unconstitutional abuse of power” from the Washington State Board of Pharmacists that required pharmacists to keep abortion pills stocked. The organization joined an amicus brief in support of pharmacists against “drugs misleadingly called ‘emergency contraceptives,’ specifically Plan B and ella.” [Americans United for Life, 6/28/16 ]
• AUL has been involved in multiple cases related to state laws seeking to restrict mifepristone, with AUL's president referring to looser restrictions as “patient abandonment.” In a press release celebrating an Arkansas law restricting mifepristone, AUL wrote that “the abortion industry consistently puts profits over people.” [Americans United for Life, 3/23/15 ,  10/4/13 ]
• The organization filed amicus briefs in support of embattled North Dakota and Oklahoma bills that restricted access to mifepristone. [Americans United for Life, 10/4/13 ,  8/21/13 ,  10/9/12 ]
• In a 2023 article on the Association for Mature American Citizens website, author Ben Solis repeated false claims made by Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy that “40 percent of abortions are chemical abortions that are likely to end with complications.”  More than 60% of all abortions are performed with the abortion pill and around 2% of all abortions have complications. [AMAC, 4/8/23 ; Guttmacher Institute, 3/19/24 ; Pew Research Center, 3/25/24 ] 
• AMAC hosted an interview with Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, to talk about how chemical abortions are supposedly “dangerous.” In the interview, AMAC CEO Rebecca Weber claimed the expansion of abortion pill access is really pro-abortion activists “taking advantage of frightened young women.” Mancini argued that access to mifepristone is “dangerous in a lot of different ways” claiming the drug is “actually much harder on women's health than surgical abortion.” [YouTube, 11/9/22 ]
• In a story on its site, the California Family Council (CFC) wrote about the recent Supreme Court case regarding mifepristone, saying that “true reproductive freedom includes access to comprehensive information about fertility, pregnancy, and the support available for women experiencing a crisis pregnancy.” CFC Vice President Greg Burt remarked, “This case is not merely about regulatory oversight; it’s about reaffirming the foundational values that respect life and prioritize genuine healthcare that serves both mothers and their children.” [California Family Council, 3/29/24 ] 
• On its Instagram account, the group declared, “The abortion pill is not a form of contraception; rather, it is an exceedingly hazardous drug, particularly when used without medical supervision.” The post added, “The abortion pill leads the death of an unborn baby and potential dangers to the mother.” [Instagram, 12/13/23 ]
• The group fearmongered that “Mifepristone and misoprostol put women at risk for infection, injury, loss of fertility, depression, and other life-threatening complications.” It concludes that “women deserve to know about their options and have access to life-saving medication,” referring to abortion pill reversal. [California Family Council, 9/25/23 ]
• In at least two other publications on its website, the group pushed misleading information about the safety of the abortion pill, calling it “dangerous,” and “highly controversial.” [California Family Council, 11/29/22 ,  2/7/22 ] 
• In a 2023 article on the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) website, director of research Rebecca Oas wrote that “period pills” or medication used to “induce menstrual bleeding or early pregnancy loss” are used for “the intentional destruction of an unborn life.” [Center for Family and Human Rights, 2/10/23 ; PeriodPills.org, accessed 5/15/24 ]
• In an article complaining about expanding access to abortion pills during the COVID-19 pandemic, Oas called use of mifepristone a “dangerous procedure.” [Center for Family and Human Rights, 5/8/20 ]
• C-FAM published multiple articles condemning the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders for supporting the distribution of abortion pills. In one piece C-FAM argues “mail-order abortion pills” put patients at risk of getting an abortion “without [their] consent by abusive partners, parents, or others, such as human traffickers.” [Center for Family and Human Rights, 6/28/19 ; 2/28/20 ]
• In an article for Pacific Standard on the WHO’s endorsement of mifepristone, Oas is quoted repeating her argument that expanding access to abortion pills will result in the use of the drugs by “abusive partners” for nonconsensual abortions. [Pacific Standard, 7/15/19 ]
• In a policy issue primer published on Center for Renewing America’s site, the organization supported the Fifth Circuit's ruling against the FDA’s interpretation of the Comstock Act, and claimed the “weaponized agency is willing to violate the law to advance its abortion agenda.” CRA also suggested Congress attempt to “prohibit chemical abortions at the federal level.” [Center for Renewing America, 5/2/23 ]
• In a piece on its website, Concerned Women for America noted its support for stricter abortion pill regulations alongside other anti-abortion groups, against the FDA in the ongoing Supreme Court case. The piece describes the agency’s actions as “reckless disregard for women’s safety.” [Concerned Women for America, 3/25/24 ] 
• CWA wrote a piece directly focused on the case heading to the Supreme Court, calling mifepristone “dangerous” and the FDA’s approval of it “reckless.” CWA CEO and President Penny Nance said, “Let’s be clear; there is nothing safe or effective about allowing people to perform their own DIY abortion.” [Concerned Women for America, 12/13/23 ]
• On CWA’s podcast, Nance said supporters of the medication “want there to be abortion, as I’ve said before many times, any time, any reason, in any number, all paid for by you.” She continued, “They don’t want a girl to even leave her dorm room to have it. They’re happy for her to struggle for several days to actually miscarry this baby alone and to be traumatized and maybe, you know, have consequences that render her sterile later or maybe even death.” Later on, she added, “This is not nearly over. We have a lot of work to do. We are winning.” [Concerned Women for America, 4/19/23 ,  4/19/23 ] 
• CWA’s Deanna Drogan wrote for the website, “We can see that increasing the ability to perform DIY abortions results in many health risks for mothers (known and unknown) and an increasing number of babies innocently murdered from abortion.” [Concerned Women for America, 4/23/21 ]
• In an opinion piece for Newsmax, Nance wrote that there is “nothing safe about DIY abortion.” She added, concerning the Texas case, “Americans who are concerned for the safety and well-being of young women should be grateful that this judge had the courage to make this decision.” [Newsmax, 5/15/23 ]
• Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism fellow Arina Grossu Agnew appeared on The Lars Larson Show to discuss “How many babies do abortion pills like Mifepristone kill?” In the interview, Grossu claimed the FDA “looked at flawed studies, irrelevant studies” when approving the drug “and there are a lot of complications that can happen.” She went on to call mifepristone “a very dangerous abortion drug.” [KXL, Lars Larson Show , 5/1/23 ]
• Senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence Michael Egnor wrote in an article for The Stream that abortion drugs “cause significant physiological and behavioral harm.” Egnor’s article is based on a study by Dr. Stephen Sammut, whose research also pushes the unsupported science of “abortion-pill reversal.” [The Stream, 7/10/19 ; Franciscain, Accessed 5/15/24 ]
• President of Eagle Forum Kristen A. Ullman published an article in March arguing against use of the abortion pill. In the article, Ullman called mifepristone “dangerous” and repeated unverified claims that the abortion pill has a notably high number of documented negative effects. [Eagle Forum, 3/24/24 ]
• Eagle Forum joined a coalition of anti-abortion groups who called on Congress to send cease-and-desist letters to pharmacies mailing abortion pills. [Eagle Forum, 3/12/24 ]
• In an article fearmongering about mifepristone titled “Danger Lurks in Local Drug Stores,” Ullman called the drug a “dangerous pill that not only kills an unborn child but causes serious side effects and even death to countless women.” [Eagle Forum, 3/4/24 ]
• Ethics and Public Policy Center fellows submitted two amicus briefs for the Supreme Court case on mifepristone supporting Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine in its case against the abortion drug. The briefs claimed the FDA and Biden administration are in “violation of federal and state law” by expanding access to mifepristone. [EPPC, 3/1/24 ]
• President of EPPC Ryan T. Anderson, previously a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, published an article with National Review titled “Making Abortion Illegal and Unthinkable,” in which he argued, “We’ll need laws to prevent cross-state transportation of abortion pills.” [National Review, 6/11/22 ; The Heritage Foundation, accessed 4/19/24 ]
• Focus on the Family's lobbying arm, Family Policy Alliance, submitted an amicus brief for the Supreme Court case on mifepristone in which it argued the FDA’s current mifepristone guidance is “dangerous for women” and claimed, “Medical Emergencies Caused by Mifepristone are Increasing” and cites the declaration of Dr. Christina Francis, the AAPLOG CEO. [U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , Brief of Amicus Curiae, 2/28/24 ]
• After Biden supported access to mifepristone in January, FPA called on its audience to push back against the dispensing of abortion pills in pharmacies, seemingly citing a now-retracted study that led FPA to falsely claim that “women who use abortion pills are 50 percent more likely to visit an ER than with a surgical abortion.” [Family Policy Alliance, 1/24/23 ; National Library of Medicine, 11/9/21 ]
• FPA also called on pharmacies to refuse to distribute abortion pills. The FPA director of government affairs claimed in the statement, “Abortion drugs are a health and safety threat to women and their children.” [Family Policy Alliance, 1/6/23 ]
• In an episode of Family Research Council’s Washington Watch with Tony Perkins , Senior Vice President Jody Hice interviewed Louisiana state Sen. Thomas Pressly about his legislation to classify mifepristone as a dangerous substance in Louisiana. Hice called the passing of the law “good news” and called it a “model” for other states. Hice went on to congratulate Pressly and claimed the “abortion industry” is “fearmongering” over the legislation. [Family Research Council, Washington Watch with Tony Perkins , 5/24/24 ]
• FRC’s affiliated blog The Washington Stand published a piece similarly praising the Louisiana law, which claims abortion pills “are not safe.” [The Washington Stand, 5/28/24 ]
• FRC filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case over mifepristone claiming that the FDA was “reckless” in approving the drug and that use of mifepristone creates “long-lasting psychological and spiritual distress.” [Family Research Council, 3/5/24 ]
• In 2022 FRC published an issue analysis on medication abortion, which it called “The Next Abortion Battleground.” The analysis summarized FRC’s issues with abortion pills, leveling claims that there are “profound dangers such poorly supervised medical care poses to women’s health” and that “the abortion industry” is pushing abortion pills for “political, ideological, and financial goals.” [Family Research Council, 2/22 ]
• Also in its analysis on abortion pills, FRC argued that easing regulations of mifepristone would “complicate the detection of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.” In a section on “Sexual Abuse and Sex Trafficking” FRC claimed, “Abusers, along with those in the sexual exploitation industry ... would love an environment in which they can compel women to repeatedly have abortions.” The section also claimed that Planned Parenthood is aiding sex traffickers by providing abortions. [Family Research Council, 2/22 ]
• The analysis also laid out policy suggestions, such as “complete removal of the chemical abortion regimen from the market,” forcing manufacturers of the drug to “report all adverse events” from mifepristone, and prohibiting the prescription of abortion pills over telehealth. FRC claims its final goal is “to see the sale and the approval of drugs meant to intentionally kill life in the womb eliminated from our society.” [Family Research Council, 2/22 ]
• In a 2021 report, legislative assistant Chantel Hoyt claimed expansion of access to mifepristone means “the abortion industry seems willing to gamble with women's lives and health” in order to expand access to abortion. [Family Research Council, 7/19/21 ; FRC, accessed 5/15/24 ]
• Starting in 2013 First Liberty Institute represented Joe Holland in a case against the federal government challenging the so-called  “Abortion Pill Mandate.” First Liberty argued he should not have to provide insurance coverage for abortion pills because of his faith. [First Liberty Institute, accessed, 4/16/24 ]
• ForAmerica president David Bozell joined a Washington Times podcast to attack the use of mifepristone, calling it “unfathomable.” He went on to claim, “The left will not stop until there is abortion on demand funded by the United States taxpayer up to and perhaps even including the moment of birth." [The Washington Times, 3/29/24 ]
• Liberty Counsel, an anti-abortion legal organization, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Frederick Douglass Foundation to the Supreme Court asking it to uphold the Fifth Circuit’s decision to reinstate restrictions on mifepristone. [World News Group, 3/12/24 ]
• Ashley Bateman, a policy writer for the Heartland Institute, wrote a piece for The Federalist regarding anti-abortion activists protesting at the Supreme Court about the FDA case, describing mifepristone as a “high-risk drug.” [The Federalist, 3/27/24 ]
• Heartland Daily News, a publication affiliated with the Institute, has been attacking abortion medication for years. Recently Bateman published an article where she labeled mifepristone a “high-risk drug” and a different piece by Harry Painter attempted to raise concerns about the safety of telemedicine prescriptions for mifepristone while conflating the use of the medication with “back-alley abortions.” [The Heartland Daily News, 4/15/24 ,  3/27/24 ,  12/6/22 ,  9/18/21 ]
• The James Dobson Family Institute in a piece titled “Baby-Killing Pills” claimed the Biden Administration wants to distribute mifepristone “like candy,” and said it continues to “use every tool it has to keep the number of abortions in America as high as possible.” Later on, the author describes the medication as a “killer abortion pill.” [Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, 4/14/23 ]
• The institute was one of many organizations to sign an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on the FDA battle over the drug. [U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , Brief of Amicus Curiae, 2/29/2024 ]
• A commentary piece for the organization described mifepristone described as “death by mail,” and attacked pro-choice organizations, writing, “See you in court, NARAL! JDFI proudly signed onto an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and we look forward to making the case for life before the U.S. Supreme Court.” [Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, 8/30/23 ] 
• A 2021 piece by Dobson himself endorsed a bill that aimed to strip universities of their federal funding if they distribute reproductive medication to students. [Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, 8/3/21 ]
• Media Research Center’s affiliated news outlet, NewsBusters, published an article claiming NBC “fear mongers” about Louisiana’s new law classifying mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous substances. The piece said an NBC correspondent stating the new law will create confusion around the safety of the drugs is “fear-mongering” and tries to rebut the idea by claiming the law “isn’t banning the drugs.” [NewsBusters, 5/22/24 ]
• The right-wing “media watchdog” organization has been releasing content railing against abortion and mifepristone for years. In many pieces, the titles refer to the drugs as “harmful,” dangerous”, and “deadly.” [NewsBusters, 3/20/24 ,  4/24/23 ,  4/22/23 ,  3/24/23 ,  11/18/22 ]
• The organization has also cherry-picked stories to bolster its fearmongering about the pill. In one example, it describes a “chemical abortion nightmare” where a woman on YouTube described witnessing the heartbeat of the fetus and the health issues she faced afterward. The Media Research Center used the story as an opportunity to attack Planned Parenthood for what it describes as “its prioritization of killing babies over keeping women out of harm's way.” [Media Research Center, 1/5/24 ]
• In a commentary piece for its parent organization, the National Center for Public Policy Research, Project 21 member Patrina Mosley described mifepristone as a “lethal regime,” and compared the fight to end abortion with the fight to end slavery. She went on to claim the medication “has led to untold physical and psychological harm” to patients. Mosley also went on to claim drugs like mifepristone are an easy way for pharmaceutical organizations to make quick profits, and allow for “sexual abusers and partners who are unwilling fathers” to coerce people into taking the drug. [The National Center for Public Policy Research, 4/20/23 ] 
• Both groups also signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking it to reverse the approval of the drug. In a concurring statement, Project 21 chairman Horace Cooper said, “Project 21 supports ending the FDA’s attempt to radically expand the use of mifepristone into some sort of ‘morning after’ abortion pill.” He went on to call the medicine “dangerous” and claimed that pro-life doctors should be exempt from prescribing the medication as it would make them “an accessory to an evil act.” [The National Center for Public Policy Research, 3/26/24 ]
• Students for Life of America has been a leading force behind a push to prohibit reproductive medication — the organization’s website even has a “chemical abortion” landing page, which fearmongers about the safety of mifepristone. [Students for Life of America, accessed 5/15/24 ; Politico, 4/19/23 ] 
• Students for Life Action, the political arm of the organization, released a statement praising Louisiana’s new law categorizing mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances. The statement called the drugs “dangerous” and repeated claims that chemical abortions result in significantly more complications and death than surgical ones. [Students for Life Action, 5/23/24 ]
• Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins posted on X praising the Louisiana law and calling abortion pills “dangerous” and, in another post, claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was “protecting sexual predators” by speaking out against the law.  [Twitter/X, 5/22/24 , 5/23/24 ]
• I n a press call reported on by NPR, Hawkins described the process as tantamount to “death by mail delivered to your doorstep.” [NPR, 12/16/21 ]
• The group has spread debunked claims about medication abortion having a harmful impact on wildlife and the environment, and filed a petition with the FDA to require providers of the medication to be responsible for the disposal of fetal tissue similar to medical waste. Hawkins was quoted in an organization blog saying that “tainted blood, tissue, and human remains have been flushed away, without any hard look at what happens next, or what happens to us and the environment.” [Media Matters, 3/12/24 ; USA Today, 12/12/22 ; Students for Life for America, 11/23/22 ] 
• A different blog post focused on the supposed dangers of using abortion medicine and the “abortion pill myths perpetuated by the abortion industry.” It argued that it is a “myth” that the majority of patients who take the medication don’t experience “serious complications,” and claimed that it is illegal and unsafe for the medication to be sent through the mail. Additionally, the group said abortion medicine is “uniquely traumatic” to patients. [Students for Life for America, 4/26/23 ] 
• Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a statement congratulating Louisiana for the The Catherine and Josephine Herring Act categorizing abortion drugs as controlled substances. The statement, by Southern Regional Director Caitlin Connors, claims “pro-abortion Democrats have enabled abusers to coerce and poison mothers with dangerous abortion drugs,” seemingly referencing the FDA easing restrictions on the drugs. The organization repeated these claims in a blog posted to Substack. [Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, 5/21/24 ; Substack, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, 5/23/24 ]
• In March of 2024, SBA published a piece on its site titled “Five big lies about the Supreme Court mail-order abortion drug case” in which it focuses on potential harmful side effects of the drug and the effects on patients. [Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, 3/25/24 ]
• Notably, two publications cited as key studies in the Texas lawsuit against the drug, produced by the research arm of SBA, the Charlotte Lozier Institute, were retracted from a medical journal for issues regarding flaws and conflict of interest. [The Associated Press, 2/7/24 ]
• The SBA was also one of several organizations to sign an amicus brief in support of reinstating the rule requiring an in-person visit to be prescribed mifepristone. [ U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , Brief of Amicus Curiae, 2/24 ]
• According to Vox, SBA has been reaching out to right-wing governors in numerous states to discuss restrictions on the shipment of abortion medication. The organization’s state director of affairs told Vox that she expects states to be “creative” in finding ways to enforce restrictions against reproductive rights. [Vox, 1/9/23 ]
• SBA has released numerous press releases following the litigation of abortion medication, in many cases describing the pills and their distribution as “dangerous” and “reckless.” [The Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, 4/13/23 ,  2/8/23 ,  1/25/23 ,  1/19/23 , 1/3/23 ,  11/18/22 ]
• In January 2022, SBA, alongside a coalition of other organizations, released a letter to the Senate arguing against the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf for commissioner of the FDA due to his support of abortion pills. The letter claimed Califf approved “unsafe mail-order abortion.” The letter was also signed by other Project 2025 partners such as Concerned Women for America, Americans United for Life, Family Policy Alliance, and The Ethics and Public Policy Center. [Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, 1/12/22 ,  2/14/22 ]
• In 2023, The Texas Public Policy Foundation filed an amicus brief in  U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, defending other Project 2025 partners' effort to limit access to mifepristone.  [ U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , Brief of Amicus Curiae, 2/29/24 ]
• Turning Point USA has published several opinion pieces from contributors attacking mifepristone. In one piece titled “NY Passes Law Requiring Public Universities to Provide the Abortion Pill to Students,” Turning Point USA contributor Morgan Zegers highlighted mail-ordered pills, writing, “Recently, some states have approved the sale of these abortion drugs via online order and mail delivery, a move that has been called reckless as it endangers not just the pre-born child, but also the life of the mother.” [Turning Point USA, 5/3/23 ]
• Turning Point USA contributor Erin Elmore took aim at mifepristone again in a piece asking, “Did the FDA Classify Pregnancy as an Illness to Approve ‘Abortion Pill?’” Elmore said the drug is “has several side effects, doesn’t always work as intended, is linked to the deaths of nearly 30 women, and has caused life-threatening illnesses in hundreds of women.” [Turning Point USA, 4/20/23 ]
• In another blog, Morgonn McMichael wrote about FDA regulations allowing for mifepristone to be sold at retail pharmacies, heavily accentuating the negative side effects of the medication. She writes, “Despite the innumerable side effects, some tolerable, others life-threatening, Plan C, a medical abortion pill provider, still claims that abortion is ‘safer than continuing a pregnancy and having a baby.’” She goes on to add, “Making the abortion pill more accessible is not the win for women that the left is branding it as.” [Turning Point USA, 1/4/23 ]
• Young America’s Foundation published a blog on its website in July 2023 attacking a seminar at Texas A&M University which included information about mifepristone, titled “Pregnant Woman Teaches Texas A&M Students How to Perform Illegal Abortions.” YAF wrote, “Universities should never allow students or guest speakers to use official resources to promote illegal activity. Hopefully, the investigation will result in consequences for the leftist student organization as well as the administrators who approved the all-school invitation.” [Young America’s Foundation, 7/19/23 ]
• In April 2023, YAF filed an amicus brief alongside several other right-wing organizations, which argued that the “FDA abused its own regulation in approving mifepristone in 2000.”  [ U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , Brief of Amicus Curiae, 4/18/23 ]

Virginia Tech Helmet Lab expands beyond sports to develop ratings system for safety helmets

• Lexi Clatterbuck

25 Jun 2024

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Copy address link to clipboard

Thirteen years after releasing the first independent safety ratings for varsity football helmets , the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab is expanding beyond the field of athletics. 

This summer, researchers will begin an 18-month study to develop the first ratings system for safety helmets, also commonly referred to as hard hats or construction helmets. The ratings system will join the nine sports the lab already produces ratings for using their five-star scale.

The lab has conducted injury biomechanics research outside sports before, including its research on toy product safety and work with the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership on drone impact testing for operations over people . However, this is the first time that the lab will extend its impact by developing a ratings system to evaluate a non-sports helmet.

“Of all industries, construction has the most workplace fatalities,” said Steve Rowson, the lab's director. “Identifying, improving, and implementing better head protection could be the difference between life and death for some of these accidents.”

From 2000-08, the construction industry was responsible for more traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) than any other industry, according to an article published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. These injury scenarios cause high head injury risk from the high speeds involved.

In this project, researchers will study head impact and concussion risk in a work site environment with the following objectives:

• Characterize the conditions associated with head impacts in construction through analysis of accident reports and surveillance video.
• Generalize the real-world loading conditions observed in the reconstructions to controlled laboratory test systems.

The lab will also use its Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk (STAR) model to combine data from multiple test sites and compute an overall performance score representative of expected real-world injury rates. The STAR score is calculated based on a helmet’s performance in a series of impact tests and assigned a number of stars between one and five to categorize impact performance. Impact conditions are sports-specific and inclusive of the broad range of head impacts likely to be experienced, hence the need to develop a STAR model specific to safety helmets for this project.

Test commercially available safety helmets and publicly release data on the Virginia Tech Helmet Ratings website

This innovative work has been propelled forward by a joint commitment of funding and guidance from the John R. Gentille Foundation, ELECTRI International, the American Society of Concrete Contractors, and the Association of Union Constructors.  

“We are honored to support research that will improve the safety of the men and women building our nation by focusing on the industry-specific factors that contribute to head injuries,” Raffi Elchemmas of the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, said on behalf of the four construction organizations. “We are all committed to finding solutions to the challenges that the construction industry faces every day and confident this project will lead to improved head protection and reduce injuries.”

The lab is scheduled to complete the project by August 2025.

“We hope this work leads to fewer disabling or fatal head injuries resulting from accidents by providing stakeholders with data to make informed decisions on equipping the workers with the most effective personal protective equipment,” Rowson said.

Learn more about the lab’s methodology, history, and upcoming project by watching the video below.

Related stories

NERF: Safety isn't kid's stuff

Youtuber behind Berm Peak visits the Helmet Lab

Lindsey Haugh

• Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics
• College of Engineering
• Good Health and Well-Being
• Helmet Research
• Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
• Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science
• Top News - Instagram
• Virginia Tech Global Distinction
• Virginia Tech Helmet Lab

Related Content

• Privacy Policy

Home » Research Methodology – Types, Examples and writing Guide

Research Methodology – Types, Examples and writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Methodology

Definition:

Research Methodology refers to the systematic and scientific approach used to conduct research, investigate problems, and gather data and information for a specific purpose. It involves the techniques and procedures used to identify, collect , analyze , and interpret data to answer research questions or solve research problems . Moreover, They are philosophical and theoretical frameworks that guide the research process.

Structure of Research Methodology

Research methodology formats can vary depending on the specific requirements of the research project, but the following is a basic example of a structure for a research methodology section:

I. Introduction

• Provide an overview of the research problem and the need for a research methodology section
• Outline the main research questions and objectives

II. Research Design

• Explain the research design chosen and why it is appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Discuss any alternative research designs considered and why they were not chosen
• Describe the research setting and participants (if applicable)

III. Data Collection Methods

• Describe the methods used to collect data (e.g., surveys, interviews, observations)
• Explain how the data collection methods were chosen and why they are appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Detail any procedures or instruments used for data collection

IV. Data Analysis Methods

• Describe the methods used to analyze the data (e.g., statistical analysis, content analysis )
• Explain how the data analysis methods were chosen and why they are appropriate for the research question(s) and objectives
• Detail any procedures or software used for data analysis

V. Ethical Considerations

• Discuss any ethical issues that may arise from the research and how they were addressed
• Explain how informed consent was obtained (if applicable)
• Detail any measures taken to ensure confidentiality and anonymity

VI. Limitations

• Identify any potential limitations of the research methodology and how they may impact the results and conclusions

VII. Conclusion

• Summarize the key aspects of the research methodology section
• Explain how the research methodology addresses the research question(s) and objectives

Research Methodology Types

Types of Research Methodology are as follows:

Quantitative Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of numerical data using statistical methods. This type of research is often used to study cause-and-effect relationships and to make predictions.

Qualitative Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data such as words, images, and observations. This type of research is often used to explore complex phenomena, to gain an in-depth understanding of a particular topic, and to generate hypotheses.

Mixed-Methods Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that combines elements of both quantitative and qualitative research. This approach can be particularly useful for studies that aim to explore complex phenomena and to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a particular topic.

Case Study Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves in-depth examination of a single case or a small number of cases. Case studies are often used in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to gain a detailed understanding of a particular individual or group.

Action Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves a collaborative process between researchers and practitioners to identify and solve real-world problems. Action research is often used in education, healthcare, and social work.

Experimental Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the manipulation of one or more independent variables to observe their effects on a dependent variable. Experimental research is often used to study cause-and-effect relationships and to make predictions.

Survey Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the collection of data from a sample of individuals using questionnaires or interviews. Survey research is often used to study attitudes, opinions, and behaviors.

Grounded Theory Research Methodology

This is a research methodology that involves the development of theories based on the data collected during the research process. Grounded theory is often used in sociology and anthropology to generate theories about social phenomena.

Research Methodology Example

An Example of Research Methodology could be the following:

Research Methodology for Investigating the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Reducing Symptoms of Depression in Adults

Introduction:

The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in reducing symptoms of depression in adults. To achieve this objective, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted using a mixed-methods approach.

Research Design:

The study will follow a pre-test and post-test design with two groups: an experimental group receiving CBT and a control group receiving no intervention. The study will also include a qualitative component, in which semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a subset of participants to explore their experiences of receiving CBT.

Participants:

Participants will be recruited from community mental health clinics in the local area. The sample will consist of 100 adults aged 18-65 years old who meet the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. Participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group.

Intervention :

The experimental group will receive 12 weekly sessions of CBT, each lasting 60 minutes. The intervention will be delivered by licensed mental health professionals who have been trained in CBT. The control group will receive no intervention during the study period.

Data Collection:

Quantitative data will be collected through the use of standardized measures such as the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). Data will be collected at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and at a 3-month follow-up. Qualitative data will be collected through semi-structured interviews with a subset of participants from the experimental group. The interviews will be conducted at the end of the intervention period, and will explore participants’ experiences of receiving CBT.

Data Analysis:

Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and mixed-model analyses of variance (ANOVA) to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Qualitative data will be analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common themes and patterns in participants’ experiences of receiving CBT.

Ethical Considerations:

This study will comply with ethical guidelines for research involving human subjects. Participants will provide informed consent before participating in the study, and their privacy and confidentiality will be protected throughout the study. Any adverse events or reactions will be reported and managed appropriately.

Data Management:

All data collected will be kept confidential and stored securely using password-protected databases. Identifying information will be removed from qualitative data transcripts to ensure participants’ anonymity.

Limitations:

One potential limitation of this study is that it only focuses on one type of psychotherapy, CBT, and may not generalize to other types of therapy or interventions. Another limitation is that the study will only include participants from community mental health clinics, which may not be representative of the general population.

Conclusion:

This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of CBT in reducing symptoms of depression in adults. By using a randomized controlled trial and a mixed-methods approach, the study will provide valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between CBT and depression. The results of this study will have important implications for the development of effective treatments for depression in clinical settings.

How to Write Research Methodology

Writing a research methodology involves explaining the methods and techniques you used to conduct research, collect data, and analyze results. It’s an essential section of any research paper or thesis, as it helps readers understand the validity and reliability of your findings. Here are the steps to write a research methodology:

• Start by explaining your research question: Begin the methodology section by restating your research question and explaining why it’s important. This helps readers understand the purpose of your research and the rationale behind your methods.
• Describe your research design: Explain the overall approach you used to conduct research. This could be a qualitative or quantitative research design, experimental or non-experimental, case study or survey, etc. Discuss the advantages and limitations of the chosen design.
• Discuss your sample: Describe the participants or subjects you included in your study. Include details such as their demographics, sampling method, sample size, and any exclusion criteria used.
• Describe your data collection methods : Explain how you collected data from your participants. This could include surveys, interviews, observations, questionnaires, or experiments. Include details on how you obtained informed consent, how you administered the tools, and how you minimized the risk of bias.
• Explain your data analysis techniques: Describe the methods you used to analyze the data you collected. This could include statistical analysis, content analysis, thematic analysis, or discourse analysis. Explain how you dealt with missing data, outliers, and any other issues that arose during the analysis.
• Discuss the validity and reliability of your research : Explain how you ensured the validity and reliability of your study. This could include measures such as triangulation, member checking, peer review, or inter-coder reliability.
• Acknowledge any limitations of your research: Discuss any limitations of your study, including any potential threats to validity or generalizability. This helps readers understand the scope of your findings and how they might apply to other contexts.
• Provide a summary: End the methodology section by summarizing the methods and techniques you used to conduct your research. This provides a clear overview of your research methodology and helps readers understand the process you followed to arrive at your findings.

When to Write Research Methodology

Research methodology is typically written after the research proposal has been approved and before the actual research is conducted. It should be written prior to data collection and analysis, as it provides a clear roadmap for the research project.

The research methodology is an important section of any research paper or thesis, as it describes the methods and procedures that will be used to conduct the research. It should include details about the research design, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, and any ethical considerations.

The methodology should be written in a clear and concise manner, and it should be based on established research practices and standards. It is important to provide enough detail so that the reader can understand how the research was conducted and evaluate the validity of the results.

Applications of Research Methodology

Here are some of the applications of research methodology:

• To identify the research problem: Research methodology is used to identify the research problem, which is the first step in conducting any research.
• To design the research: Research methodology helps in designing the research by selecting the appropriate research method, research design, and sampling technique.
• To collect data: Research methodology provides a systematic approach to collect data from primary and secondary sources.
• To analyze data: Research methodology helps in analyzing the collected data using various statistical and non-statistical techniques.
• To test hypotheses: Research methodology provides a framework for testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions based on the analysis of data.
• To generalize findings: Research methodology helps in generalizing the findings of the research to the target population.
• To develop theories : Research methodology is used to develop new theories and modify existing theories based on the findings of the research.
• To evaluate programs and policies : Research methodology is used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and policies by collecting data and analyzing it.
• To improve decision-making: Research methodology helps in making informed decisions by providing reliable and valid data.

Purpose of Research Methodology

Research methodology serves several important purposes, including:

• To guide the research process: Research methodology provides a systematic framework for conducting research. It helps researchers to plan their research, define their research questions, and select appropriate methods and techniques for collecting and analyzing data.
• To ensure research quality: Research methodology helps researchers to ensure that their research is rigorous, reliable, and valid. It provides guidelines for minimizing bias and error in data collection and analysis, and for ensuring that research findings are accurate and trustworthy.
• To replicate research: Research methodology provides a clear and detailed account of the research process, making it possible for other researchers to replicate the study and verify its findings.
• To advance knowledge: Research methodology enables researchers to generate new knowledge and to contribute to the body of knowledge in their field. It provides a means for testing hypotheses, exploring new ideas, and discovering new insights.
• To inform decision-making: Research methodology provides evidence-based information that can inform policy and decision-making in a variety of fields, including medicine, public health, education, and business.

Advantages of Research Methodology

Research methodology has several advantages that make it a valuable tool for conducting research in various fields. Here are some of the key advantages of research methodology:

• Systematic and structured approach : Research methodology provides a systematic and structured approach to conducting research, which ensures that the research is conducted in a rigorous and comprehensive manner.
• Objectivity : Research methodology aims to ensure objectivity in the research process, which means that the research findings are based on evidence and not influenced by personal bias or subjective opinions.
• Replicability : Research methodology ensures that research can be replicated by other researchers, which is essential for validating research findings and ensuring their accuracy.
• Reliability : Research methodology aims to ensure that the research findings are reliable, which means that they are consistent and can be depended upon.
• Validity : Research methodology ensures that the research findings are valid, which means that they accurately reflect the research question or hypothesis being tested.
• Efficiency : Research methodology provides a structured and efficient way of conducting research, which helps to save time and resources.
• Flexibility : Research methodology allows researchers to choose the most appropriate research methods and techniques based on the research question, data availability, and other relevant factors.
• Scope for innovation: Research methodology provides scope for innovation and creativity in designing research studies and developing new research techniques.

Research Methodology Vs Research Methods

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing...

Research Design – Types, Methods and Examples

Limitations in Research – Types, Examples and...

Research Summary – Structure, Examples and...

Data Verification – Process, Types and Examples

Critical Analysis – Types, Examples and Writing...

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• Content Analysis | Guide, Methods & Examples

Content Analysis | Guide, Methods & Examples

Published on July 18, 2019 by Amy Luo . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Content analysis is a research method used to identify patterns in recorded communication. To conduct content analysis, you systematically collect data from a set of texts, which can be written, oral, or visual:

• Books, newspapers and magazines
• Speeches and interviews
• Web content and social media posts
• Photographs and films

Content analysis can be both quantitative (focused on counting and measuring) and qualitative (focused on interpreting and understanding).  In both types, you categorize or “code” words, themes, and concepts within the texts and then analyze the results.

Table of contents

What is content analysis used for, advantages of content analysis, disadvantages of content analysis, how to conduct content analysis, other interesting articles.

Researchers use content analysis to find out about the purposes, messages, and effects of communication content. They can also make inferences about the producers and audience of the texts they analyze.

Content analysis can be used to quantify the occurrence of certain words, phrases, subjects or concepts in a set of historical or contemporary texts.

Quantitative content analysis example

To research the importance of employment issues in political campaigns, you could analyze campaign speeches for the frequency of terms such as unemployment , jobs , and work  and use statistical analysis to find differences over time or between candidates.

In addition, content analysis can be used to make qualitative inferences by analyzing the meaning and semantic relationship of words and concepts.

Qualitative content analysis example

To gain a more qualitative understanding of employment issues in political campaigns, you could locate the word unemployment in speeches, identify what other words or phrases appear next to it (such as economy,   inequality or  laziness ), and analyze the meanings of these relationships to better understand the intentions and targets of different campaigns.

Because content analysis can be applied to a broad range of texts, it is used in a variety of fields, including marketing, media studies, anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, and many social science disciplines. It has various possible goals:

• Finding correlations and patterns in how concepts are communicated
• Understanding the intentions of an individual, group or institution
• Identifying propaganda and bias in communication
• Revealing differences in communication in different contexts
• Analyzing the consequences of communication content, such as the flow of information or audience responses

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

• Unobtrusive data collection

You can analyze communication and social interaction without the direct involvement of participants, so your presence as a researcher doesn’t influence the results.

• Transparent and replicable

When done well, content analysis follows a systematic procedure that can easily be replicated by other researchers, yielding results with high reliability .

• Highly flexible

You can conduct content analysis at any time, in any location, and at low cost – all you need is access to the appropriate sources.

Focusing on words or phrases in isolation can sometimes be overly reductive, disregarding context, nuance, and ambiguous meanings.

Content analysis almost always involves some level of subjective interpretation, which can affect the reliability and validity of the results and conclusions, leading to various types of research bias and cognitive bias .

• Time intensive

Manually coding large volumes of text is extremely time-consuming, and it can be difficult to automate effectively.

If you want to use content analysis in your research, you need to start with a clear, direct  research question .

Example research question for content analysis

Is there a difference in how the US media represents younger politicians compared to older ones in terms of trustworthiness?

Next, you follow these five steps.

1. Select the content you will analyze

Based on your research question, choose the texts that you will analyze. You need to decide:

• The medium (e.g. newspapers, speeches or websites) and genre (e.g. opinion pieces, political campaign speeches, or marketing copy)
• The inclusion and exclusion criteria (e.g. newspaper articles that mention a particular event, speeches by a certain politician, or websites selling a specific type of product)
• The parameters in terms of date range, location, etc.

If there are only a small amount of texts that meet your criteria, you might analyze all of them. If there is a large volume of texts, you can select a sample .

2. Define the units and categories of analysis

Next, you need to determine the level at which you will analyze your chosen texts. This means defining:

• The unit(s) of meaning that will be coded. For example, are you going to record the frequency of individual words and phrases, the characteristics of people who produced or appear in the texts, the presence and positioning of images, or the treatment of themes and concepts?
• The set of categories that you will use for coding. Categories can be objective characteristics (e.g. aged 30-40 ,  lawyer , parent ) or more conceptual (e.g. trustworthy , corrupt , conservative , family oriented ).

Your units of analysis are the politicians who appear in each article and the words and phrases that are used to describe them. Based on your research question, you have to categorize based on age and the concept of trustworthiness. To get more detailed data, you also code for other categories such as their political party and the marital status of each politician mentioned.

3. Develop a set of rules for coding

Coding involves organizing the units of meaning into the previously defined categories. Especially with more conceptual categories, it’s important to clearly define the rules for what will and won’t be included to ensure that all texts are coded consistently.

Coding rules are especially important if multiple researchers are involved, but even if you’re coding all of the text by yourself, recording the rules makes your method more transparent and reliable.

In considering the category “younger politician,” you decide which titles will be coded with this category ( senator, governor, counselor, mayor ). With “trustworthy”, you decide which specific words or phrases related to trustworthiness (e.g. honest and reliable ) will be coded in this category.

4. Code the text according to the rules

You go through each text and record all relevant data in the appropriate categories. This can be done manually or aided with computer programs, such as QSR NVivo , Atlas.ti and Diction , which can help speed up the process of counting and categorizing words and phrases.

Following your coding rules, you examine each newspaper article in your sample. You record the characteristics of each politician mentioned, along with all words and phrases related to trustworthiness that are used to describe them.

5. Analyze the results and draw conclusions

Once coding is complete, the collected data is examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to your research question. You might use statistical analysis to find correlations or trends, discuss your interpretations of what the results mean, and make inferences about the creators, context and audience of the texts.

Let’s say the results reveal that words and phrases related to trustworthiness appeared in the same sentence as an older politician more frequently than they did in the same sentence as a younger politician. From these results, you conclude that national newspapers present older politicians as more trustworthy than younger politicians, and infer that this might have an effect on readers’ perceptions of younger people in politics.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Luo, A. (2023, June 22). Content Analysis | Guide, Methods & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved June 24, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/content-analysis/

Is this article helpful?

Other students also liked

Qualitative vs. quantitative research | differences, examples & methods, descriptive research | definition, types, methods & examples, reliability vs. validity in research | difference, types and examples, what is your plagiarism score.