When Your Research Design Just Doesn't Work

When research design falls apart, what next? Learn how to adapt, recover, and move forward with clarity and confidence.

Not all research designs work the way we expect them to. In fact, many don’t. And yet, this reality is rarely discussed openly in doctoral training.

This session explores what happens when your carefully planned design starts to unravel — whether due to access issues, data challenges, methodological misalignment, or simply the complexity of real-world research. Rather than viewing this as failure, we reframe it as part of the research process.

We will focus on how to recognise when something isn’t working, how to make informed adjustments without compromising rigour, and how to communicate these changes effectively within your thesis. This is an honest, practical session for researchers navigating uncertainty.