Research Hub · Learn research
Research is a set of habits for finding out what's true and being fair to the people you learn from. People who have lived inside already know things researchers spend years trying to learn. This guide teaches the rest: how a study is planned, how people are protected, how stories become findings, and how numbers work.
Use the switch at the top to see plain words or the research terms a university would use. Both say the same thing.
Built for anyone stepping into research, including people inside who are training as researchers.
One study, seven steps
The example is the Colorado study of heat and cold inside prisons, where formerly incarcerated people helped plan the work, lead conversations and check the results. Try the exercise at each step.
Numbers, made simple
Nine cells, nine temperatures. Drag the slider to make one cell much hotter and watch which number moves.
What to notice: one very hot cell drags the averagemean up, but the middle valuemedian barely moves. That's why the Research Hub often reports the middle value: one unusual prison doesn't hide what's typical.
RankingPercentile: "90th percentile" means a prison is hotter than 90 out of 100 prisons in the data. It says where a prison stands compared to others, not whether it's safe.
Together vs. because: two things can rise together without one causing the other. This is the difference between correlation and causation. Prisons with more heat may also be older and more crowded; you need more than one number to say what causes what.
The rulebooks
Each is short, and each is used every day. Three of them have six parts; one of those may be the list your colleague described.
Lived expertise
There are many ways to be part of research. Each one deserves pay, credit and a real say.
Fair partnership means pay, credit and a real say. A federal guide says people with lived experience should be paid "at least commensurate with compensation provided to other experts" (ASPE, 2021). Harvard Catalyst puts it simply: "Do not ask your community partners to volunteer their time for your research" (Harvard Catalyst).
Glossary