It is difficult to provide explicit advice about how to design and implement a productive research project, although all behavioural researchers solve this challenging problem in some way or another. I will present some explicit, but tentative, advice about some elements of strategies for successful experimental projects. First, I propose an incomplete taxonomy of projects based on their general objectives: theory-driven research, problem-driven research, and phenomenon-driven research (see attached notes on this taxonomy). Second, I propose a budget of sub-tasks that need to be solved to achieve a successful project of each type: (A) Developing a question or hypothesis; (B) creating a model experimental or intervention task; (C ) measurement and data collection methods; (D) analysis and inference to reach conclusions. I will outline the conceptual framework and discuss a few illustrative examples of successful and unsuccessful projects from my own research history.

Let me suggest that seminar participants critically consider the taxonomy and come prepared to suggest revisions or extensions. I also suggest that each participant bring one concrete example of a project (composed of several studies), that represents a successful scientific contribution to one of the project types (or of a project type that they propose instead of the starter set of theory-driven, problem-driven, and phenomenon-driven).