Hey, guys welcome to Grad Coach TV where we
demystify and simplify the oftentimes confusing world of academic research. My name is David
and today I am chatting to one of our trusted coaches Alexandra about the golden thread.
We are going to be talking about what it is and why it is so important. Like always
today's discussion is based on one of our many, many articles over at the Grad Coach blog. So if
you would like to find out more about the golden thread and how to use it in your research
be sure to head over to gradcoach.com/blog. Also if you are looking for a helping
hand with your dissertation thesis or research project be sure to check out
our one-on-one private coaching service where one of our coaches will be with you
every step of the research journey holding your hand. For more information and to book a
free consultation head over to gradcoach.com. Hey, Alexandra welcome to the Coach Cast as
always it is super great to have you here with us tonight. Hi, David thanks so much for the invite
I always love coming on and chatting research with you. So Alexandra it is time we are doing it we
are diving into the golden thread. And in today's video, we are going to be talking about what it
is why it is important and how to use it in your research project. So I guess let us just start
with it what is the golden thread, Alexandra? Yes so I feel like as novice researchers one day we
are doing our research we have never heard of this concept of the golden thread and then suddenly
it is all be here. So essentially what the golden thread is it is composed of three elements for
your research. Your research aim, your research objectives and your research questions. So
why these three elements that compose your golden thread are important is that above all
they identify the boundaries of your study, they identify what you are working in and what
you will not go outside too. So in that sense, they also help keep your paper together or focused
or aligned and also it allows you to identify if you are being thorough cohesive and coherent with
your project goals within those boundaries. It also goes by a range of other names and slightly
different arguments but you can call it your key arguments, your elevator pitch, your key message,
research narrative there is a whole range of ways that it is utilized but broadly speaking it is
the same idea it is what is driving your research. So now that we know what the golden thread is
I think maybe we should take a little bit of a dive into the specific components of that golden
thread. And the first one is the research aim. Alexandra what is the research aim and how do we
identify it? So as I mentioned before the golden thread has those three elements to it and so this
first one the research aim this is the main goal or the overarching purpose of your dissertation or
thesis. And what makes this aim an aim is that it is a high-level statement of what you are seeking
to achieve. And so sometimes this high-level statement we could see might look something like
this research aims to, this research sought to, the aim of the study was to, the study planned to.
It is kind of a formulaic statement that should be identifiable. And so why we need this high-level
statement for the aim is to assess largely if the research that you said you set out to do the aim
you set out to do is what you actually ended up doing at the end of your study. And so why this
is helpful is that it is a good way to find out if what you have set out to do has been accomplished
in the study or not. Like I said and as I kind of alluded to what you say in the research aim, in
the introduction you should be able to find its mirror self in the conclusion to see if that aim
was achieved or not. That is really helpful and a quick tip if you are working through a paper and
want to get a high-level summary of what the paper is doing keep an eye out for that aim statement
in the introduction, see what it is talking about and then pick that up again in the findings and
discussion section. Because there should be a statement that is very much in line with that
aim statement providing an answer. And if you take those that are the core of what the paper set
out to do. That is often enough the novel findings that they have found. So that has been really
helpful to define what it is but maybe it will be good to just get some examples. So Alexandra
do you have any qualitative examples of a good research aim? Absolutely so with qualitative it is
going to be different than quantitative which you will mention but a sample study could be having
the topic of employee experiences of digital transformation in retail HR. So that is the topic
and now we want that high-level statement our research aim. So maybe that is something like this
research aims to explore employee experiences of digital transformation in retail HR. And so kind
of the key words here are that this study aims to explore okay, kind of one of those common
qualitative aim verbs experiences is pretty typical as an aim in qualitative. And so with that
high-level statement, we are able to see what this research study is set out to do so that later
on, we have to make sure that we have followed up on that. And as the reader, you should be able
to identify if they did what they set out to do. That is a really great example and if I were
to think up a quantitative example right now let us say you are doing a study on graduate
engineering students and their well-being and you are interested to see whether student
support or self-care are factors playing a role in that well-being you might use an aim statement
like this study set out to assess the interaction between student self-care and support services
on well-being in engineering graduate students. What we have got there is all of the key variables
of interest the well-being, self-care and student support. We also are introducing the idea
of an introduction and prediction. And so we have got all those key ideas. You know it
is quantitative when they are talking about connections between variables and predictions
and relationships, correlations. So keep an eye out for those kinds of words as well when trying
to identify the type of research you are doing. So now that we have covered what a research aim is
let us move on to the next aspect of that golden thread which is the research objective. Alexandra
what is the objective and why do we need it? Yes so typically your research of aims and your
research objectives are similar but the difference is that as opposed to research aims the research
objectives are a bit more practically oriented. Whereas the research aim was a high-level
statement. So these objectives they are looking at specific things that you will be doing
to achieve that aim that we previously stated. So to do so they break down the research aims into
more specific actionable tasks and these research objectives also describe the actions that you will
be taking and the specific things that you will investigate in order to achieve and answer that
research aim from the previous part of the golden thread. And so when assessing existing research
to help get an idea of what to do for your own research objectives you use research objectives
to evaluate how the researchers broke down the research aim into achievable steps to conduct
their research. So you should look for those achievable steps when you are evaluating existing
research. That is really helpful to get an idea of what the objective is but how do we use that in
our own research and how do we determine these? So like a lot in research researchers and
educators have developed some kind of helpful tips and tricks for different parts. So for the
research objectives, there is a nice acronym you can use called SMART. So what this is essentially
saying is that starting with your research aim like I mentioned you need to break it down
into actionable tasks that are your objectives. But how do you do that? Follow this SMART acronym
your objectives need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. So as you are
looking at your research aim and determining how to break down your research objectives from
that into those steps keep in mind that your research objectives need to be smart. That is so
helpful and it is really a good way to think about taking that somewhat high-level complex statement
breaking it down into the steps you are going to need to do to answer that aim. I think right
now it would be really great to again go back to those aims we had earlier and do that breakdown
right here and right now. Okay so if we go back to our qualitative example about employee experiences
and digital transformation in HR we had our aim in the previous step and now we want to break that
down into actionable tasks to make our research objectives. So if our research aim before was that
this research aims to explore employee experiences of digital transformation in retail HR I want
to break that down to maybe a first research objective of observing the retail HR employees
throughout the digital transformation. A second one could be assessing employee perceptions of
digital transformation in retail HR and still a third one could be identifying the barriers and
facilitators of digital transformation in retail HR. And so what you may have noticed with these
three examples is that they all kind of start with an action verb. Observe, assess, identify and this
is very common for research objectives because as we mentioned your objectives should be actionable
putting your aim into action that you can actually address in your study. That is a really great
coverage of the qualitative side of things. Quantitative side of things is not much different.
We are going to be taking that aim that we have in this case it was this study set out to assess
the interaction between students of support, student self-care on well-being in engineering
graduate students. We are now going to break that up into specific objectives. And
maybe the first one would be to determine whether student self-care predicts well-being
scores in engineering students. Our second objective might be to determine whether student
support predicts the well-being of engineering students. And our third and final objective might
be to assess the interaction between student self-care and student support on well-being of
engineering graduate students. So what you might have noticed there is in quantitative research
often enough our objectives are very strongly associated with our variables of interest. We
have three core measures that we are interested in and we kind of have objectives that relate to each
of those. We also use really active words like predict, assess, determine. You will also come
across words like prediction, correlation, quantify. These are really active words that are
going to engage with that variable of interest. So now that we have dealt with the research aim
and the research objectives we are really going to get into the research question portion of the
golden thread and personally it is the part that I feel is most important. Alexandra what are the
research questions and how do we get to them? Yes, so this is the third aspect of the golden
thread as you mentioned. And so what your research questions are these are the specific
questions that your dissertation or your thesis will seek to answer and what is nice about the
research objectives and the research questions is that the questions typically relate directly to
those objectives we just talked about. And these research questions also tend to act as the driving
force throughout your dissertation or thesis. And so what that means is once you have identified
what your research question is and you have mentioned that in your introduction we should
see that research question again throughout your whole project from the literature review to the
methodology and onward. And so like our example with the research objectives if you are feeling
a little bit uncomfortable with knowing how to formulate your own research question at first
look to existing research and look for their research questions. And so like the research
aim and the research objective it is a good way to find out if you look at existing
research if what the researcher said in the introduction is what they answered
in the findings and discussion and conclusion. So what is important about this research question
is that it should be central throughout the paper from beginning to end. Cannot agree more the
research questions really are that core idea that is keeping everything together. And so if we have
identified it in other studies how do we develop it based on our own research objectives? So for
your own research you should use your research aim statement that high-level statement to develop
the questions that you need to answer that aim okay? So with that said typically your research
questions must align with your research objectives but that is not always the case. And so I know
we just said do this to do that and here is an exception but let me explain why using the example
we gave before. So in that qualitative example of employee experiences of digital transformation
in retail HR if you will remember our first objective was to observe these retail HR employees
throughout the digital transformation. So there is not really a research question that can come from
this objective because this objective is actually representative of a step along the way to
answering other research questions okay? There is not really a research question that is to answer
for that objective. However, for that second objective that we had about employee perceptions,
a research question could answer this objective and it might sound something like how do employees
perceive digital transformation and retail HR and then that third objective of the barriers and
facilitators what a research question might look like for this is what are the barriers and
the facilitators of digital transformation in retail HR. That is really helpful and that
idea of an objective sometimes not translating to a research question does also come up in the
quantitative research particularly if your research objectives are about collecting data or
determining something right, but in our example that we suggested there were pretty good linkages
between the objectives to potential questions. So for our first research objective, an associated
research question might be something along the lines of do student self-care predict the
well-being score of engineering graduate students. Again we are asking a question that is
very similar to what we phrased in terms of the research objective but we are looking at that
question. Similarly for research question two, you might say does students support predict the
well-being score of engineering students. Again the exact same pattern. And for the last research
objectives here we might have a slightly different wording but again it is taking that objective
and moving it across. So do student self-care and student support interact when predicting
well-being in engineering graduate students. An important thing to mention when it comes to
quantitative research particularly if you are using inferential statistics is your research
questions and your hypotheses are almost always really intertwined. Your hypotheses are statements
that are answers to your research questions but they are not just statements that
come from nowhere you are basing that statement or that prediction based on
what you have seen in the literature. So just to take one of those examples if we
are talking about student self-care predicting well-being you might have a hypothesis of
student self-care positively predicts well-being scores of engineering graduate students. We have
got an expectation, we have got a direction and we have got the variables of interest. And then
we would do an associated test to assess that, Now that is a little bit of an aside but
it is an important thing to mention because in quantitative research you have got to have
hypotheses if you are doing inferential stats. Now that we have covered the parts of the golden
thread let us maybe talk about how we actually utilize the golden thread. And the first place we
want to be using the golden thread is to really ensure we are maintaining alignment throughout
our research project. And the examples we have used before represent really good alignment.
There is a nice flow of information from the aim to the objectives to the research question.
Everything seems to move nice and smoothly and tells a cohesive story. What would be an example
Alexandra of maybe a poorly aligned golden thread? So if we take the same qualitative topic that I
mentioned before you know of employee experiences of digital transformation and retail HR if we
have that topic and we say that our research aim, that high-level statement is this research
aims to explore employee experiences of digital transformation in retail HR. We say that that is
our research aim but then we follow it up with research questions or question of how do managers
in retail HR influence digital transformation. That would be an example of a poorly aligned
research aim and research question. And so why are they poorly aligned? Well first of all in the aim
I said we were looking at employee experiences, in the question I said managers okay, so we have a
different population. In the aim, I said employee experiences but in the question, I said influence
digital transformation so we had experiences but in the question we have perceptions. And
then finally we are using the verb influence okay, rather than explore. So there is kind of
three problems there with alignment namely the different populations and perceptions versus
experiences and influence rather than explore. These are two different agendas. That is really
helpful and really puts that into perspective from a qualitative view. If we were to do the
same for that quantitative example we have been talking about before student support self-care
and well-being in engineering graduate students maybe we have the aim of this study set out
to assess the interaction between support exercise and self-care on well-being in
engineering graduate students right, we have slightly changed that from the last time we have
added an exercise so we need to make sure that we have got alignment throughout. A poor alignment
in research questions would be leaving out one of those key variables. So if we had used the same
research questions as before but not included one relating to exercise’s relationship to well-being
or the interaction between exercise and the other variables that would represent misalignment. We
are almost forgetting a core aspect of our aim. So we have spoken about using the golden thread
to help with aligning your research but it can be more useful than that. We can also use the golden
thread to help us in the write-up process. So Alexandra maybe give us a bit of detail about how
that fits together? Yes so not only do you have to do the study but then you have to write about
the study so that it is coherent to a reader and obviously your panel and your markers. So when you
are doing your write up whenever you are writing or making designs decisions always check back on
your golden thread to make sure that you are not going off-topic like the examples of the poorly
aligned aims and questions or down a rabbit hole. And so why should we care to do this is that when
you are writing up and you are paying attention to your golden thread it helps with the structure.
So what things that you should keep in mind are that the golden thread those three aspects they
should appear in every chapter of your project. So if you do not have it in one of your chapters
or you do not see it in something you are reading there is a problem. So another nice thing is that
your golden thread it should bookend your chapters or come up in the summarising sections of your
chapters. And so why should we care to do this? Well unfortunately readers do not always read
your whole document so having the golden thread at either the beginning and the end or the end it
helps the lazy reader follow your research. One of the other areas that happen to be really improved
by having a good handle on your golden thread is when you are presenting or defending your
research. If you have been keeping in mind your golden thread been really working to incorporate
it make sure it is cohesive throughout your design throughout your write-up. By the time it gets
to presenting you are going to have all of those ideas really solid in your mind. So you will have
a key message in mind that will tell you what you set out to do, what you did, what you found and
what that means. And all of those really engages with that golden thread that you have done. So
do not deny the power of the golden thread and make sure you are engaging with it throughout your
research project. It is only going to strengthen your writing and your research going forward.
And I think if I could add one thing to that it will help when you are trying to explain your
research because when you get to the point where you are defending your research you should know
your study backwards and forwards in a way that you could explain it to an intelligent layperson.
That is really true and we want to be able to tell it to your mom, tell it to your sister, tell
it to your best friend who is studying something completely different. A good golden thread will
allow you to get that idea across really quickly and succinctly. Alexandra, I am so glad we got
to do the golden thread today and really engage with it. It has been super great having you
here with us again. Yes, it has been so fun it is such an important topic and I am glad we
were able to actually do a video just about it. All right so that pretty much wraps up this
episode of Grad Coach TV. Remember if you are looking for more information about the golden
thread what it is and how to use it be sure to head over to the blog at gradcoach.com/blog. There
you can also get access to our free dissertation and thesis writing mini-course which will give
you all the information you need to get started on your research journey. Then do not forget
if you are looking for a helping hand with your dissertation thesis or research project be sure to
check out our one-on-one private coaching service where you can work with one of our
friendly coaches just like Alexandra. To get all the information and to book a
free consultation head over to gradcoach.com.