www.buildingsandcities.org/insights/commentaries/research-prioritisation.html

How to decide which research challenge to address

How should researchers decide which challenge and issues to address? Marcel Schweiker (RWTH Aachen University) considers the challenges for built environment researchers and reflects on how individuals can make decisions about their own research priorities and portfolios.

Researchers strive to measure and understand aspects of this complex world (Schweiker et al. 2023) to better support human life and to address numerous challenges, old and new.The vast number of current challenges for researchers dealing with the built environment and its relationship with human health and well-being may be grouped into two types of challenges: global and structural challenges.

Firstly, there are ‘global challenges’ such as the increase in weather extremes from changing climate, the depletion of resources, demographic changes in some parts of the world, developments related to artificial intelligence, or increased number of geopolitical conflicts with devastating effects on humans and societies. Many, if not all of these sorts of challenges require a rethink in the previously accepted norms for researchers. For example, it had previously been believed that climatic conditions were relatively stable enough for energy simulations to rely upon the last 30 years’ average data. However, the increasingly dynamic and changing climate means this is no longer the case, which affects the design of research projects and questions the validity of previous consensus. For instance, research into overheating in buildings may need revisiting and revising (Stone et al. 2021). The recasting of existing understandings could be considered as the natural evolution of knowledge and presents opportunities for researchers to expand their work.

Secondly, changes in societies are causing ‘structural challenges’ for researchers in several ways. These include decreased availability of funding,¹ increased scepticism in scientific findings, diminished attention spans due to multiple communication channels, quality assurance issues due to publication pressures. There are also increased geopolitical conflicts that affect freedom of research and speech, and force researchers to rethink partnerships. A general reduction in the amount of research activity taking place due to these challenges, also limits the extent to which research can address ‘global challenges’.

The oft-said statement, 'a day has only 24 hours' is as true for researchers as for everyone else. Despite one’s intrinsic motivation to spend as much as time as possible for research, additional considerations regarding responsibilities for self and others’ long-term physical, psychological, and social well-being and health require us to balance conflicting demands.

Therefore, one of the biggest challenges in my opinion is how to prioritise research questions. This challenge exists for individual researchers, research groups, funding bodies, politicians and others. This commentary concentrates on the individual researchers where there are several factors and considerations at play that can influence our decisions.

Strategies for prioritising research activities

One strategy is to go where the funding is. The decision of prioritisation is then left to the funding bodies who decide which topic they deem important. This strategy is sometimes inevitable if funding constraints exist. This approach could reduce freedom of research, and a narrow the diversity of research topics.

The second prioritisation method consists of conducting research solely related to those topics of personal interest that have emerged from recent research agendas, the individual’s exposure to a research landscape and their personal context and capacity. This method may only be possible if sufficient funding or support is available. Would it be selfish to use resources for such topics not identified as important by the research community or society? One can never tell if research findings will have relevance or insights that can be applied to unrelated challenges or future unknown societal problems as discussed in literature related to researchers freedom of choice (Shaw 2022) .

A third, more scientific prioritisation method would be to adopt an analytical approach. One example of this can be found in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey (2020). Habit 3 is ‘Put First Things First’ in order to prioritise decisions on the basis of importance and urgency. Other analytical approaches prioritise decisions according to the degree of effort (duration or costs) and the scale of the anticipated benefits of the research. These approaches use a prioritisation matrix, or the relative cost of delay, to rank options using for instance the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) approach. Another approach which combines many of these elements of importance and efficiency is the RICE ((Reach x Impact x Confidence) / Effort) scoring model (McBride 2024).

Challenges for prioritisation approaches

Many of these methods require an estimate of benefit or impact - which in turn raise further questions or challenges. First of all, one needs to make a decision for oneself regarding the goal to be reached. Whether the goal is to help as many people as possible, understand a problem as thoroughly as possible, or publish as many articles as possible, may lead to different evaluations of the same challenge and its alternatives to be addressed. Thereby, win-win thinking – also mentioned as habit 4 by Covey – can target more than one (personal) goal. However, the bigger challenge is likely estimating the amount of benefit or level of impact for different if not all alternatives. In many cases related to the impact of above-mentioned challenges within buildings and cities on human well-being and health, research is still far from sufficient evidence to quantify benefits or impact. Constantly adding to the existing evidence, while revisiting previous decisions and their validity in a constantly changing world, would be a worthwhile challenge to approach. Until further knowledge and information exist for such decision, we may have to rely on a mix of the best of knowledge available, personal and funders’ interest, and our gut feeling.

How would you decide (if you have the opportunity) which challenge to address?

Note

1. Although the absolute amount of research funding as well as the relative amount spend in relation to the GDP have increased over the last 10 years in many countries (https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.html), several budget cuts are looming that have been announced in media in various countries (e.g. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2024/Massive-cuts-in-research-funding-hamper-necessary-innovations-in-key-technologies-energy-transition.html, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03506-y, https://www.science.org/content/article/french-scientists-alarmed-disastrous-cut-research-budget )

References

Covey, S.R. (2020). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 9781471195204

McBride, S. (2024). RICE: Simple prioritization for product managers. https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/

Schweiker, M., Hass, J., Novokhatko, A. & Halbleib, R. (2023). Measurement and understanding in science and humanities: Interdisciplinary approaches. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-36974-3

Shaw, J. (2022). Revisiting the basic/applied science distinction: The significance of urgent science for science funding policy. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 53(4), 477-499. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-021-09575-1

Stone, B., Jr., Mallen, E., Rajput, M., Gronlund, C.J., Broadbent, A.M., Krayenhoff, E.S., Augenbroe, G., O’Neill, M.S. & Georgescu, M. (2021). Compound climate and infrastructure events: How electrical grid failure alters heat wave risk. Environmental Science & Technology, 55(10), 6957-6964. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c00024

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