Monday, August 10, 2026
research as marathons and sprints
Some research is like a marathon. There are months involved in co-designing the research design, making connections, seeking participants and writing up results.
This particular research project has been the opposite. It’s been a sprint, from the moment the funder contacted the team at AngelWings Ltd just before Easter until the report was done. Over a 13 week period, there were 99 interviews, an average of 7 per week. Some of the groups the funder wanted to hear from were hard to reach and required “double introductions” – connecting with a denomination and gaining confidence in the project in order for them to pass on an invitation.
Over the last few weeks, the pace has changed, from sprint to gentle warm down. There has been the verbal presentation to the funders. This needs to occur once the written report is digested. Which is then followed by agreeing on a public summary of results and a thanking of participants. All of which takes time and feels like a slowing walk at the end of a period of intense (sprinted) exercise.
But the slower pace has allowed some time to wander the second hand shops and choose an ending symbol. I’ve written before about the importance of marking the end of a major research project and how I look for an object, generally in a second-hand shop, that symbolises the project.
i do this because I want to make visible the work done – in this case the work of finding people to interview, including groups that are harder to reach, the craft of turning hours and hours of interviews into themes with supporting quotes and the developing of findings.
I choose this object for this particular research project because of the colours – the reds and purples of the fruit in the bowl. I also choose it because fruit in a bowl is the result of hours of work – pruning in winter, weeding in spring, watering in summer, fighting birds in the autumn. And this particular project has the potential to yield fruit for the next few decades and the research played a key role in guiding decision-making around where and how to investment.
Which is research worth sprinting for. And fruit worth savouring as the project ends.
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