3. Is your research useful? A 2003 study conducted at the St. Thomas School of Medicine, London, identified four criteria for ‘good’ research. The first and foremost was that research should have practical application for its field. It needs to be useful to someone. In their case, ‘good’ research informed the development of health services or interventions. Who will use your research? Most of the people I work with are doing research because they want to make a difference. And yet, I would wager, that very few have them have published something that has impacted policy, changed someone’s life, or even had more than fifty reads. Make your research useful. Partner with people who need it. Get it in the hands of the people who want it. An academic journal shouldn’t be your first or last publisher. If you need a research question, go find someone who has a real problem and then work with them to solve it. Look around. We’ve got plenty of problems to solve. 4. Is your research empirically derived? A growing trend in the social sciences is to woo your audience (and impress reviewers) with complex and contemporary statistics. But if you don’t have a good research question or a good data collection strategy, it doesn’t matter what you do with your data. Bad data with robust analysis does not ‘good’ research make. Your research question should be interesting,