1. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One 1 Research as a Creative and Strategic Thinking Process How do creativity and strategy fit into analytic research?

2. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One2 Exploring Research Research is a ‘thinking person’s game’ and a ‘whole brain endeavour’ that uses both the Creative Right Brain and the Logical Left

3. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One3 Left and Right Brain Attributes The Logical Left Analytic Logical Temporal Sequential Orderly Systematic Formal Linear Verbal Factual Concrete The Creative Right Intuitive Spontaneous A temporal Random Diffuse Causal Informal Holistic Non-verbal Imaginative Metaphoric

4. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One4 The thinking processes of the ‘creative’ often involve: Fluency and flexibility Originality Remote associations Redefinitions Sensitivity to problems Acceptance of ambiguity Divergence

5. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One5 The Construct of Research Scientific research was born of positivism adopted the assumptions of that paradigm including: a knowable and predictable world empirical and reductionist research objective and expert researcher hypothesis driven methods and statistically significant, quantitative findings

6. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One6 The Construct of Research Over the past decades, the assumptions of positivism have been brought into question. Post-positivists researchers acknowledge: a world that is ambiguous and variable research that can be intuitive and holistic researchers that can be subjective and collaborative methods that can be inductive and exploratory and findings that can be idiographic and qualitative

7. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One7 The Assumptions

8. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One8 Putting it all together Getting your head around the pieces of the research jigsaw can be confusing The major pieces of the puzzle include…

9. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One9 Laying the Groundwork Understanding the need for creative and strategic thinking in research Appreciating research as a ‘construct’ Being able to wade through complexity Developing strategies for staying on top of the process (see Chs 1 and 2)

10. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One10 Defining the Question The art and science of knowing what you want to know Developing researchable questions that can direct methods (see Ch 3)

11. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One11 Researching Reflexively Negotiating power, politics and ethical responsibilities (Ch 4) Getting a handle on the criteria and indicators of good research (Ch 5)

12. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One12 Exploring the literature Knowing what to read How to find it How to put boundaries on it How to organize it How to annotate it How to construct arguments with it How to write a literature review (See Ch 6)

13. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One13 Exploring design, methodologies, and methods Being able to think your way through the logistics and practicalities of methodological design (Ch 7) Being able to: explore populations (Ch 8) delve deeper (Ch 9) facilitate change (Ch 10) Working through the nitty gritty of data collection (Ch 11)

14. O'Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage Chapter One14 Communicating through research Crafting a compelling and credible storyline through reflexive analysis (Ch 12) Writing up and disseminating your work (Ch 13)