☑ Have you thought through who might hold the answer to your questions and how you will open up opportunities to gather information from them?

☑ Is your question best answered by a population/ sample, key informants, cases, or a combination of the above?

☑ Can you locate and access your respondents?

☑ Will you need to sample? If so, have you:

- Defined your population?

- Constructed a sample frame?

- Determined appropriate sample size?

- Employed an appropriate sampling strategy?

-  If you want your sample to be representative have you considered strategies for ensuring you will not have a coverage error / non-response bias?

☑ If you will be working with key informants, have you:

- Considered using individuals from a variety of roles, including experts, the experienced, leaders, the observant, gossips, those with secondary experience, insiders, stool pigeons and ‘ex’s?

-  Negotiated potential informant agendas?

- Remembered your ethical responsibilities?

☑ If working with a case, have you:

- Defined your case?

- Selected an individual case or series of cases that meet your definition and sits within your case boundaries?