DOING RESEARCH ON REAL-WORLD CHALLENGES

ABSTRACT There are often calls for scholars to do more practically relevant research, but there is little guidance on how to do that. Doing work dealing with real-world challenges is a tough task, often requiring an interdisciplinary approach. I offer six strategies to help scholars. It is important to care about the challenge as this is a resource in the research project. Scholars must read widely about the challenge, often outside the core discipline. They should plan a structured literature review as a scholarly deliverable alongside the empirical work. Because the intent is for the work to be practically usable, the empirical component has to be very robust. Recommendations should be linked to the core discipline, but the dissemination strategy should go beyond academia.