Changing Research Practices resources and reports

Guidance material

The following nine guides were produced across the three phases of the Changing Research Practices intiative.

• Wayfinder guide to adapting interview practices for Covid-19
• Wayfinder guide to creative methods combinations in Covid-19
• Wayfinder guide to adapting participatory methods for Covid-19
• Wayfinder guide to doing ethical research during Covid-19
• Wayfinder guide to conducting ethnographic research in the Covid-19 era
• Wayfinder guide to moving to secondary data analysis
• Wayfinder guide to Covid-19 secondary data resources
• Wayfinder guide to in-situ methodologies in a Covid-impacted uncertain world
• Wayfinder guide to equitable research relations in and after Covid-19

Reading and resource lists

• Doing research with children and young people in the context of Covid-19: Reading and resources
• Low and middle-income countries (LMICs) / Global South research during the pandemic 2nd edition
• Alternatives for interviews
• Researching with participant groups with additional challenges
• Participatory and deliberative methods
• Research ethics in Covid-19
• Creative and sensory methods
• Doing ethnography in the pandemic
• Survey and longitudinal methods
• Secondary data and Covid-19 data

Reports and papers

The following reports and phases were published by members of the Changing Research Practices team across the three phases of the project.

Analysis of researchers' experiences

In a series of online knowledge exchange workshops, researchers conveyed their recent research experiences by drawing and presenting a river sketch. The Changing Research Practices team then produced a paper, which critically engages with these "research rivers" by creating a new interference pattern of a new materialist approach combined with experiences and project artefacts.

The compatibility of new materialism and qualitative inquiry is discussed. Through an analysis focussed on two of the rivers, the ways the research river activity entangled matter and meaning is examined. The paper shows how a new materialist understanding of exclusion transforms the ethical dimensions of researchers’ methodological decisions.

• Research rivers: Flows of agency through crisis

Synthesis of the learning among the social research community 2020–2022

This paper synthesises a large dataset on how social research methods and practices have been adapted or designed for use within pandemic conditions and a climate of crisis and uncertainty.

• Research practices for a pandemic and an uncertain future: synthesis of the learning among the social research community 2020–2022

Phase II-III rapid evidence review

This Rapid Evidence Review synthesises evidence available in academic publications from 2021 to update the review of evidence from 2020.

• Changing Social Research Practices in the Context of Covid-19: Updated Rapid Evidence Review – Synthesis of the 2021 Literature

Phase I report

This is the main report from the first phase of the project, which had two aims: to engage the research community (within and beyond the academy) in learning and sharing positive methodological responses to, and possibilities within, the constraints of Covid-19 measures when conducting social research; to synthesise the evidence available to the research community on how social research methods have been successfully adapted for, or may work within, pandemic conditions.

• Changing Research Practices: Undertaking social research in the context of Covid-19

Phase I rapid evidence review

This review synthesises evidence available in academic publications from 2020 with the aim of charting how social research methods have been successfully adapted for, or designed for use within, the pandemic conditions of Covid-19.

• Changing Social Research Practices in the Context of Covid-19: Rapid Evidence Review