Free access or individual subscription
Register with an email from a licensed university to have free access to the Idea Puzzle software or with another email to subscribe it individually (19 euros per year). The access to the Idea Puzzle software is exclusively online, without installation on the computer, after allowing pop-up windows in your Internet browser.
Design and defend your PhD as a system of 21 decisions:
1/21 Relate and define non-tautologically two concepts in a direction that focuses and gives a title to your research.
2/21 Specify the differences between the streams of thought in terms of a theoretical assumption.
3/21 Provide a direct quote from an expert of the streams of thought suggesting further research on your topic.
4/21 Specify the type of research question and relate the two concepts in your title in the same direction.
5/21 Specify the current answer / results by the streams of thought to your research question / set of hypotheses.
6/21 Specify the philosophical stance of your study.
7/21 Specify the research strategy or one of its variants, excluding data collection and data analysis techniques.
8/21 Specify the data collection techniques, excluding academic publications.
9/21 Specify the type of qualitative coding / statistical analysis and the respective research software tool.
10/21 Specify the quality criteria and the tactics to meet them before publication.
11/21 Specify the empirical entity or process that you will compare to operationalise the two concepts in your title.
12/21 Specify the scale of comparison of your unit of analysis.
13/21 Specify which data are qualitative and which data are quantitative.
14/21 Specify which data are secondary and which data are primary.
15/21 Specify your sample as a set of examples of the unit of analysis / unit of observation.
16/21 Specify your studys public and commercial interest as well as its ethical and political conflicts of interest.
17/21 Specify your studys logic as either quasi-inductive, hypothetic-deductive, or abductive.
18/21 Specify your studys theoretical, methodological, and empirical limitations.
19/21 Specify your education and first-hand experience of the empirical phenomenon under study.
20/21 Specify who will give you access to theory, method, and data, in addition to your supervisor.
21/21 Specify your time availability and your sources of funding.
Introduction to the software
The Idea Puzzle software is a decision-making tool that helps doctoral researchers improve the coherence of a research proposal, article, or thesis in the light of Philosophy of Science (Morais & Brailsford, 2022). It also helps review the strengths and weaknesses of a research project in any field of knowledge (Parente & Ferro, 2016). To date, it has helped design more than 8000 research projects worldwide.
The Idea Puzzle software poses 21 questions, helps answering them, and allows the self-evaluation of each answer in terms of decision-making progress. The help function of the Idea Puzzle software includes instructions, tips, definitions, introductions, bibliography, and examples of research designs that won the Idea Puzzle Prize. The output of the Idea Puzzle software is a research design with 21 answers, an overall score, and a coloured jigsaw puzzle of progress that can be shared in PDF or in Word.
In 2023, the Idea Puzzle software was a finalist of SAGE £15k Concept Grant, from a total of 89 research software tools. The jury considered the theoretical framework of 21 decisions unique and praised the way it helps doctoral researchers design their research:
Daniela Duca, Head of Product Innovation, Sage Publishing, United Kingdom
We love your approach and how the Idea Puzzle software helps students and early career researchers go through the process of developing their research.