Determine your research questions. What do you want to know? Solidifying your research questions will help you figure out exactly what kind of data you need to collect and from whom. Are you targeting workers on mental health teams? Or are you looking to see how people being served by the teams feel about the services? Research questions for this topic can vary greatly. You may look at whether or not these teams help to reduce aggression in clients, how efficiently the teams work and respond to a crisis or how well the team does their job. These questions all require different types of data collection.
Gain permission from the institution under which you are conducting your research. Major hospitals, colleges and universities have an Internal Review Board or IRB that reviews and approves research proposals. These boards are designed to ensure that research using human subjects will not violate ethical standards. You will need to submit a research proposal to this board prior to conducting any research.
Find your subjects. Your research question will determine from whom you will collect your data. A study that looks at the effectiveness of mobile crisis team will likely collect data that is connected to people being served by crisis teams. This can be done either by directly contacting these people or by using data already collected by the crisis teams when they gave the services. There are many advantages to using data that has already been collected. For instance, it makes it easier to compare demographic and treatment groups. You may also choose do conduct surveys and/or interviews, either over the phone, in person, online or by mail. How you conduct each type of a study will vary, but it is important to keep your data collection organized and methodical.