Introduction
This section outlines some of the fundamental skills that can be important in carrying out a research project. These include questionnaire design, literature searching and getting published. It is not our intention to provide a comprehensive overview of these techniques and skills. Instead, where possible, we are trying to point medicines information pharmacists and others new to pharmacy practice research in the direction of high quality guidance that is already out there. There is a wealth of helpful information available, both published and on the web, and we have tried to pick out some of the best sources, to save you time and effort in browsing through articles and sites that may not be relevant.

One of the best gateway sites on research techniques we have come across is TRIAGE. This is the Trent Research Information Access Gateway. The site is up to date, well organised and easy to navigate; it contains lots of useful research links including the following headings: general, tutorials, design, data, questionnaires, presentation and writing. Note that this is a general research gateway site and has not been devised specifically for health researchers (it also has contains some very useful links relating to critical appraisal which are handy for medicines information pharmacists to know about!). Other potentially helpful websites are identified in the Research Links section.