What is it about?
This paper introduces Everyday Practice-Based Research (EPBR), an approach for developing research entry from everyday experience and professional practice. It shows how recurring experiences, observations, or concerns can be reflected on, documented, and gradually developed into clearer questions for inquiry. EPBR focuses on how research begins, while keeping important distinctions between lived experience, reflection, evidence, and formal empirical research.
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Why is it important?
Many important questions first appear outside formal research settings, through everyday life, professional practice, or recurring concerns that people notice over time. Yet there is often little guidance on how to develop these experiences responsibly into a starting point for inquiry. EPBR addresses this early stage. It offers a structured but flexible pathway for clarifying what is being noticed, recognising the limits of personal experience, and deciding whether further inquiry is appropriate. This may make research entry more accessible while protecting research integrity and avoiding premature claims about evidence or research findings.
Perspectives
I developed EPBR from a question that stayed with me across research, professional practice, and everyday life: what should we do when an experience keeps making us think, but we do not yet have a formal research question or study? I wanted to create a pathway that takes everyday knowledge seriously without automatically treating lived experience as research evidence. For me, the value of EPBR lies in that space between noticing something meaningful and deciding responsibly what kind of inquiry, if any, should come next.
Thi Xuan Dieu Phan
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Everyday practice-based research as a qualitative inquiry approach: structuring research entry from lived experience, Qualitative Research Journal, August 2026, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/qrj-04-2026-0195.
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