Research Advice

The following are general resources on doing research from different sources. My own research and publications are described elsewhere. I only provide personal research advice to those at my own university, though others may find the following information to be useful.

Advice

Planetizen column: advice on undertaking the exit project, capstone, or thesis. Topics include the what, why, and when of choosing an exit option, getting started, troubleshooting common problems, managing your committee, using sources, writing a literature review, and actually finishing.

Courses and advising at Harvard: Guidelines for theses and papers  and my course on qualitative methods in planning. Two key handouts from the course focus on qualitative sampling, data collection, and analysis along with overall outputs; and on research, reliability, and validity more generally.

The Faculty Women’s Interest Group of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning has created a Yellow Book Guide to the tenure track in planning. Sandi Rosenbloom was key in all three editions; Lisa Schweitzer and I helped with the third edition. When ACSP redid its web site they made it hard to find so I have attached it here.

Useful Links

Human subjects process at Harvard:

My Work

I have published on the character of research in the environmental design fields and on academic life. A number of these articles are below. Publications on specific research methods and approaches many also available on the tools, manuals, and methods section of this site: