The Role and Core Skills of the Researcher
A six-item list, one line about developing what you lack, and nothing else. Short as it is, the list is worth taking seriously — and worth reading against everything else the same source asks a researcher to do.
The six skills, as the source lists them
Two things follow from a list that short. The first is that it should be read as a starting point rather than a specification — the source itself hedges with "typically". The second is that the honest way to use it is to work out what each item has to do inside an actual research project, which is what the rest of this page does.
The list also sits oddly against the wider material. The same teaching source treats research capability as part of the management job rather than an academic extra, an argument developed in Why Project Managers Need Research Skills. A list this operational is a curious way to describe a capability framed that way.
What each skill has to do in a research project
THE SIX SKILLS MAPPED ONTO THE RESEARCH PROCESS
| Skill (source wording) | What it actually does | Where it bites hardest |
|---|---|---|
| Attention to detail | Keeps every claim traceable back to the evidence and every source back to its reference | The literature step and the write-up, where an untraceable number costs you the argument |
| Numerical skills | Handles counts, proportions, scales and comparisons without arithmetic or logic errors | Analysis, and the design of any structured instrument |
| Computer literacy | Gets data into an analysable shape and keeps versions, references and files under control | Everywhere between collection and submission |
| Strong Excel capabilities | The source's specific instance of the above — spreadsheet-level data handling | Analysis of counts and scales; production of tables and figures |
| Be an effective communicator | Secures access and cooperation, elicits usable answers, and presents results to a specific audience | Negotiating access, interviewing, and the report |
| Interpret and analyse data to turn it into information | Moves from what the data says to what it means for the question asked | The conclusion, where the analysed data is set against the literature |
The first column is the source's wording. The second and third columns are synthesis — the source supplies no definitions and does not map the skills to the process.
Attention to detail is a traceability requirement
In everyday use, attention to detail means tidiness. In research it means something more specific and more testable: a reader can take any statement in your report, follow it back to the evidence behind it, and find that evidence where you said it would be.
That is not a personal virtue, it is a property of the record you keep. The source's own instruction in the literature step is a detail practice stated as a procedure — note and date all your drafts and references as you go along, annotate sources as you read, and record the value of each reading to your topic. Done from the start it costs minutes; reconstructed at the end it costs weeks. See Step 3: Checking the Literature.
The requirement also connects to a claim made elsewhere in the source: scientific research can be replicated. Replicability is not achieved by intention. It is achieved by a written record precise enough that somebody else could repeat what you did — see Scientific Research: Five Defining Characteristics.
Numerical skills and data interpretation are not the same skill
The list contains two items that look adjacent and are frequently collapsed into one: numerical skills, and the ability to interpret and analyse data to turn it into information. Keeping them apart is worth the effort, because they fail in different ways.
The distinction, as this page uses it
- Numerical skills
- The capacity to work with numbers correctly — counts, proportions, ordered scales, comparisons between groups. The failure mode is an error nobody catches.
- Interpretation
- The capacity to say what analysed data means for the question you asked. The failure mode is a technically correct analysis that answers nothing.
The source's own data vocabulary shows why numerical skill is needed even in work that nobody would call quantitative. It describes classifying things into categories, counting how many fall into each, and using ordered response scales — and it treats the counts and proportions derived from those categories as the basis for analysis. Handling those correctly is a numerical task whatever the study is labelled. See Attribute, Ordinal and Numerical Data.
Interpretation is the step further on. The source describes it as turning data into information; at the conclusion step it goes further again, describing analysed data being theorised — set against the literature to establish where it supports and where it contradicts the field. Information becomes a contribution only at that point.
Computer literacy, and the one product the source names
"Strong Excel capabilities" is the only software named anywhere in the supplied material. It sits in a list whose other five items are generic, and it is specific in a way that dates the material and narrows it to one vendor's product.
It is reproduced here because it is what the source says. It is also worth reading for the capability underneath the product name, which is durable even where the tool is not.
- Getting data into a rectangular, analysable shape — one row per case, one column per variable
- Transforming and recoding without destroying the original data
- Producing counts, proportions and cross-tabulations you can check by hand
- Building tables and figures that survive being pasted into a document
- Keeping versions distinguishable, so the analysis behind a figure can still be found
One caution, offered as general practice rather than source content: a spreadsheet is a capable analysis tool and a poor instrument of record. It carries no history of who changed what, and a sorted column detached from its neighbours destroys data silently. Where the record has to be defensible, keep the raw data in a form nothing writes back to.
Being an effective communicator covers more than the report
The obvious reading of this item is the write-up, and the write-up is genuinely part of it — the source's final steps require you to summarise the project and communicate the results to your specific audience. That is covered in Steps 9-10: Writing the Report and Storing the Data.
But the same source puts communication load at three earlier points, and those are where research projects actually fail.
Three earlier demands on the same skill
Securing cooperation
Among the source's feasibility considerations is whether you can achieve the cooperation needed to take the project to a successful conclusion. That is a persuasion task, performed before anything is collected, usually with people who owe you nothing.
Eliciting usable answers
The source notes that people are aware of research being conducted on them, and asks whether your questions are appropriate and respectful of cultural norms. Both are communication problems that determine data quality before analysis begins.
Justifying the design
The source requires the researcher to explain and justify the methodology and methods used. A design you cannot explain in plain language to a sceptical reader has not been justified, however carefully it was chosen.
The middle card is also where communication meets ethics, which the supplied source reduces to three screening questions before deferring the substance. See Step 6: Seeking Ethics Clearance.
What the six-item list leaves out
The fair way to test a skills list is to read the rest of the same document and ask what it demands that the list does not name. On that test the six items are noticeably incomplete.
CAPABILITIES THE SOURCE DEMANDS ELSEWHERE, AGAINST THE SIX-ITEM LIST
| Capability the source requires | Where it appears | In the six-item list? |
|---|---|---|
| Finding, appraising and synthesising literature | Step 3 — source, scan, annotate, and build a theoretical framework | No |
| Scoping a topic that is doable | Steps 1 and 2 — narrow enough to be interesting, broad enough to find information | No |
| Choosing and justifying a methodology | The philosophy material — the researcher must explain and justify the design | No |
| Ethical judgement | Step 6, and a stated subject learning objective | No |
| Managing the research as a piece of work | Step 7 — "effective project management is required at this stage" | No |
| Sustained writing over months | Step 9, plus the instruction to write daily | Partly, via "effective communicator" |
| Turning analysed data into a contribution | Step 8 — the analysed data is theorised | Yes |
The left column is drawn from other sections of the same supplied source. The judgement in the right column is this page's, not the source's.
Assessing yourself, and deciding what to do about the gaps
The source's single development instruction — you will have many of these, others you will need to develop — leaves the diagnosis to you. Self-rating against six abstract nouns produces nothing useful, so rate against evidence instead.
Evidence that you actually hold each skill
- Attention to detail: you can trace any three figures in your own draft to raw source inside five minutes
- Numerical skills: you can state, for your design, what will be counted and what proportion of what it represents
- Computer literacy: your data is in one analysable shape and your references are managed somewhere other than in the document
- Spreadsheet capability: you can recode a variable without overwriting the original column
- Communication: someone outside your field has read your research question and restated it correctly
- Interpretation: you can say what a plausible finding would mean for the decision the research is meant to inform
When a skill is missing
What to carry forward
- The source names six core skills, defines none of them, and offers one sentence about developing what you lack.
- "Strong Excel capabilities" is the only tool named in the supplied material; read it as spreadsheet-level data handling and note that it dates the list.
- Numerical skill and interpretation are separate capabilities with separate failure modes — keep them apart.
- Attention to detail means traceability, and traceability is a property of the record you keep, not of your temperament.
- Communication is loaded earlier than the report: access, elicitation and justification all draw on it.
- The list omits literature work, scoping, methodological justification, ethical judgement and managing the research — all of which the same source demands elsewhere.
- Assess yourself against evidence, then acquire, buy or design around each gap, deliberately and in writing.
Frequently asked questions
What are the six core skills the source lists?
Attention to detail; numerical skills; computer literacy; strong Excel capabilities; being an effective communicator; and the ability to interpret and analyse data to turn it into information. The source presents them as skills a successful researcher must typically have, adds that you will need to develop the ones you lack, and says nothing further.
Do I really need spreadsheet skills to do research?
The source names one specific product, which is unusually narrow for a skills list and dates the material. The durable capability behind it is structured data handling — getting data into an analysable shape, recoding without destroying the original, producing checkable counts and proportions. Any tool that does those things satisfies the underlying requirement.
Does the list mean I need to be able to do statistics?
Not on the source's authority. It names no statistical technique, test, threshold or package anywhere, and defers analysis technique to a textbook that was not supplied. If your design needs inference from a sample to a population, that competence sits outside this list and has to be obtained and cited elsewhere.
Is this list a complete picture of what a researcher needs?
No, and the page says so. Read against the rest of the same source, the list omits literature searching and appraisal, topic scoping, methodological justification, ethical judgement and managing the research as a piece of work — all of which the source requires at other steps. Treat the six as a floor.
How do I develop a skill the source says I need?
The source gives no development method at all, only the observation that some skills will have to be developed. The workable approach is to identify which capabilities your specific design requires, then decide explicitly for each whether you will acquire it, obtain it from someone else, or change the design so it is not needed.
References and source attribution
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Veal, A. J. 2005, Business Research Methods: A Managerial Approach, Longman.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated week 2 and week 3 teaching notes and slide material on developing a research topic, used here as the basis for all statements attributed to "the source".
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Assess my research design against the six core skills and tell me which ones it actually demands.
- What spreadsheet capabilities do I need for a survey-based project management study?
- Which capabilities does the supplied source require that the six-skill list does not name?
- Help me decide whether to acquire a statistical technique or redesign my study to avoid it.
- Build me a traceability record so I can trace any figure in my report back to raw data.