"Where do I even get started with research?"

I receive this question a lot from trainees. If you read most blogs, they'll just provide you with a generic checklist of what to do but don't contextualize your specific situation. I like to take a more nuanced approach.

To personalize the best advice for my mentees, I need to know their present situation and how I can best guide them. It would be irresponsible for me to recommend a student with a 3-month timeline to embark on a project that cannot be completed within 1 year. As such, I'd like for you to go through this self-assessment and consider the following questions.

Perform a Self Assessment

Key Questions:

• What is your timeline?
• What is your main goal of starting clinical research?
• Do you have any research support that you can access easily?
• Do you have any research skills?

Use these questions for self-reflection. Be honest with yourself - this assessment works best when you're realistic about your current situation. These are to help orient you and direct you to find a feasible research project for your goals.

🕐 What is your timeline?

Your timeline expectations need to be realistic. Publishing a peer-review manuscript typically takes 12-18 months. Do you have time to wait that long before your next application? Presenting an abstract might take 6-9 months. Submitting an abstract might take 1-3 months.

Your timeline also influences the types of research you should be doing. If you have more time, you have more options. But if you have less time (like <6 months), then you're pretty limited to working retrospective data and case reports.

🎯 What is your main goal of starting clinical research?

You should have 1 (max 2) main goals. These goals can be to:

• Publish a peer review manuscript
• Present an abstract at a national conference
• Get research experience
• Obtain a letter of recommendation
• Build your network
• Complete a graduation requirement for your program
• Increase your competitiveness for your next application
• Develop your research skillset
• Gain a research experience to write about in your personal statement
• Discover something new

🤝 Do you have any research support that you can access easily?

If you're affiliated with an institution and have easy access to a lot of mentors, then your options are much broader. Mentors help guide novice researchers to completing a project. If this type of institutional support is not available, then you will need to be creative to find a mentor who can sponsor you from outside of the institution, or choose projects that don't need access to that institution's data.

📊 Do you have any research skills?

Your existing research skills can accelerate your progress. If you know how to ask a research question, find a database, do the analyses, interpret the results, and write the paper, then you're in an incredible position. But if you have fewer skills, then you have to be more creative in your approach. You can either learn these skills through self-directed coursework, take time off to learn dedicated research skills, find a mentorship team that can guide you to success, or utilize new tools (like Lumono) to make up for those areas of inexperience.

Score-Based Guide

Now that you've completed your self-assessment, let's quantify your situation to determine the best path forward. Rate yourself based on the following criteria of timeline, skillset, and nearby research support. Your score will give you a sense of your realistic research possibilities.

📝 Scoring Criteria

Timeline:

• Less than 6 months: 1
• 6 months to 18 months: 2
• More than 18 months: 3

Skillset:

• Modest to no research experience or training (understand basic biostatistics, such as interpreting basic tests (t-tests, chi-square tests, etc) and their p-values): 1
• Moderate research experience or training (able to extract your own data and run your own basic tests using a statistical platform like SAS, Stata, SPSS, R, or Python): 2
• Advanced research experience or training (able to identify the appropriate tests, conduct your own advanced analyses such as regressions, interaction analyses, and sensitivity analyses): 3

Nearby Research Support:

• No accessible research support. You have no easy way to connect with mentors locally because of your location, lack of university affiliation, or other reason: 1
• Some research support. You have some nearby mentors with experience who may be able to take on new mentees: 2
• Plentiful research support. You have many mentors in your proximity with experience, dataset, and funding: 3

Options Based on Score

🏆 Score 8-9: Strong Position

Description: You have multiple advantages working for you
Strategy: Optimize for your specific goals

You can afford to be selective about opportunities. Focus on projects that directly serve your primary goal:

• For publications: Seek mentors with strong publication records with trainees
• For networking: Choose high-profile mentors or collaborative multi-site projects
• For skill development: Take on leadership roles in complex analyses
• For applications: Prioritize projects that will be completed before your deadline

⚖️ Score 6-7: Mixed Position

Description: You have one significant strength but also one significant weakness
Strategy: Leverage your strength to overcome your weakness

If you scored 3 in any category, lead with that strength:

🕐 Timeline Advantage (scored 3): Use your time to build missing skills or connections

• Take online courses in biostatistics while networking
• Reach out to remote mentors and offer long-term collaboration
• Use public datasets to develop preliminary results that attract mentors

📊 Skillset Advantage (scored 3): Use your abilities to access opportunities

• Analyze public data to create compelling preliminary results
• Offer your technical skills to mentors in exchange for guidance
• Lead student research groups to build your network

🤝 Support Advantage (scored 3): Leverage relationships to address other constraints

• Seek projects with tight but achievable timelines
• Request introductions to collaborators who can fill skill gaps

🎯 Score 3-5: Constrained Position

Description: You have multiple significant limitations
Strategy: Start small and build systematically

Phase 1 (Immediate - 1-3 months):

• Focus on case reports or descriptive studies that require minimal statistical analysis
• Identify one potential mentor through any available channel
• Begin basic statistics learning through free online resources

Phase 2 (3-6 months):

• Complete your first small project, even if it remains unpublished
• Establish regular communication with at least one mentor
• Demonstrate reliability and teachability to build relationships

Phase 3 (6+ months):

• Use your first experience to access slightly more complex projects
• Expand your network through your initial mentor's connections
• Apply newly learned skills to collaborative projects

🚀 Accelerated Path for Any Score

Regardless of your starting position, research platforms like Lumono can help bridge common gaps that limit trainees. Based on our experience mentoring students to publication, we've identified the most common bottlenecks: finding appropriate research questions, accessing clean datasets, running correct statistical analyses, and understanding methodology well enough to write clearly about it.

Lumono addresses each of these challenges by providing curated research questions, pre-processed national datasets, guided statistical workflows, and auto-generated methodology sections. This allows you to focus on learning the research process rather than getting stuck on technical barriers.

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