People might be asked to fill in a form which asks them lots of questions about a particular subject. When enough people have filled in the form a report will be written about the questions asked which will tell people the main answers which were given.

It might be useful to have focus groups, either on their own or with a questionnaire. Focus groups are small groups of people who have a common interest, for example they might all be family carers or they might all live in the same area. The groups are brought together to talk about a subject and a facilitator will be there from SCLD to lead the discussion. The main things that the group talk about would also be made into a report to let everyone know the main findings.

People might meet with a member of the SCLD Research Team to speak to them abuot their experiences. This is done on a one to one basis. Once a few interviews have been done the main things that have been discovered will be put into a report.

We have used the words "findings" and "report" a lot. These are quite difficult words. Findings are what has been found out during the research. For example it might be that a lot of people have the same opinion about something or a lot of people have the same experiences. These would be called findings.

Findings are what goes into the report. Usually at the end of a research project a report will be written to tell everyone what has been found out. Sometimes the report will have an easy read summary too. Although the report contains all the information gathered during research it will usually be anonymous information. This means that it will talk about how many people have the same opinions or experiences but it won’t tell anyone who these people are. If you are involved in a research project SCLD will tell you at the beginning whether or not the report will be anonymous.

Here is an example of how one of SCLD’s research projects would be done.

• Research is usually commissioned by someone else. This means that another organisation would ask SCLD to find out information for them.
• SCLD would find out exactly what information the organisation is looking for and work out the best way of finding this out and who they should ask. At this point SCLD would arrange for the information to be gathered. This might been developing a questionnaire or organising focus groups.
• Finding out the information is the next stage. SCLD might send out the questionnaires or hold the focus groups. All the information gathered in groups or interviews must be written down.
• Once the information gathering part is finished SCLD would pull together everything they found out and work out what the main findings were.
• The main findings would then be used to write the report. If there was to be an easy read summarry this would also be written now.