Publishing while receiving research training: Special reference to measuring quality of life

Students enrolling in research degrees are well aware that producing more quality publications while they are pursuing their degree is useful, especially in terms of finding a job they like after graduation. In the seminar, I will try to demonstrate to students how this could be achieved strategically with minimal additional efforts. As the speech is part of a Postgraduate Summer School and Research Conference for students in education, social sciences and humanities, the subject area chosen for demonstration purposes is quality of life (QOL) research. To be more specific, QOL index has increasingly been used as an outcome measure in many studies aim to improve the wellbeing of people with disabilities. Typically, after a brief introduction, a thesis will start with comprehensive literature review. Based on the results of the review, students may wish to adopt a commonly used measuring instrument or to develop a new assessment tool to measure QOL of the target population. The aim of the talk is to discuss methodologies that are useful for this kind of research, and how these research results can be put into publications before the whole thesis is completed. Copyright © 2012 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.