Start With a Review Article Posted on January 14, 2008 Review articles are a great way to become aware of opportunities with data and with individuals, says Jeannette R. Ickovics (bio).

I think review articles are an excellent way to start, in part because again you gain very broad expertise, and that’s a good way to identify a niche. You’re doing a review; you get a good handle on what’s out there and therefore what’s not out there. I think the audiences are becoming more sophisticated to the extent that those can be systematic and structured reviews. They don’t have to be meta analyses, but that’s another piece that adds certainly some weight and substance to it. I think reviews are a great way to essentially collect a lot of information that’s out there and get a good handle on it, and as I said, identify the gaps.

At the same time, or subsequently, doing the primary empirical work or secondary data analysis of existing data sets is also important so that you’re not going to create your own scientific base and infrastructure just on a review article. But it’s a great way to start and from there it can open up some opportunities: thinking about what data exist there that you might have access to, national databases that are free reign, free access, or calling up an investigator, a potential mentor or collaborator at your home institution or at another institution offering your analytic skills and finding a place to collaborate.

And then again, in this process, moving forward ultimately thinking about primary data collection of your own and beginning the reality, beginning with small studies, likely small descriptive studies, but moving over time to larger studies and in public health, certainly moving from descriptive to intervention and potentially from local to national to international.

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