![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/3H-graphic-cropped.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Throughout my career in science communication, I\u2019ve regularly been asked \u201cwhat makes a good research story?\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckily, I have worked in institutions that encouraged their researchers to develop research \u2018for the real world\u2019, both in Australia and overseas.<\/p>\n
These institutions have had direct contact with their communities, and through intermediaries such as officers in government agencies, teachers in community schools, or journalists in the media, so their research often could tell a relevant, interesting story.<\/p>\n
However, even in this positive situation, I was still asked by many researchers, \u201cwhat makes a good research story?\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, I have honed my suggestions to three \u2018Hs\u2019: head, heart and hip pocket.<\/p>\n
A \u2018head<\/strong>\u2019 story makes people think – it has an intellectual basis to it. The story makes an audience member say, \u201cWow, I didn\u2019t know that, that\u2019s really interesting\u201d. The trick is to present the story in a way so that that same audience member can understand the research story the first time they hear it, without having to look up \u2018Dr Google\u2019, or ask a friend or family member for a \u2018translation\u2019. If they have to do this, you have lost them.<\/p>\n A \u2018heart<\/strong>\u2019 story makes people feel \u2013 happiness, sadness, anger, fright, empathy, sympathy. Conveying these feelings through a story is very powerful, especially if they are attached to people in recent or past history. Careful selection of media is very important for these stories: media that present audio and visual stories \u2013 still photos or video \u2013 really work well here.<\/p>\n A \u2018hip pocket<\/strong>\u2019 story refers to the money made or saved through the research, or the gains for the community (which often have economic implications). Hip pocket stories should include numbers and statistics \u2013 but only a few. They lend themselves to visual elements such as simple graphs. They are also good for promoting innovations for business and for community development.<\/p>\n I believe good research stories should contain at least one of these Hs, if not more, to address that question of the listener \/ reader \/ viewer, \u201cso what, why should I bother hearing \/ reading \/ watching this story?\u201d<\/p>\n My aim as communicator is to work with the researcher to develop a message so that an audience. not schooled in their research discipline, can understand that \u2018so what\u2019 – they can say \u201cah, that makes sense, that\u2019s really worth knowing \u2026 and supporting\u201d.<\/p>\n Now that has to be good research impact.<\/p>\n To investigate the best angle for your next research story, contact The Comms Doctor\u00ae<\/sup> via email<\/a> or visit The Comms Doctor\u00ae <\/sup>website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Throughout my career in science communication, I\u2019ve regularly been asked \u201cwhat makes a good research story?\u201d Luckily, I have worked in institutions that encouraged their researchers to develop research \u2018for the real world\u2019, both in Australia and overseas. These institutions have had direct contact with their communities, and through intermediaries such as officers in government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10,11,8,12],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tools","tag-research","tag-researchcommunication","tag-sciencecommunication","tag-tellastory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecommsdoctor.com.au\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}