Conducting the Research

At long last, you've submitted your experimental design and analysis plans for feedback, made some adjustments that were "ok'd", and now you can finally undertake your research!

Keep lots of notes, especially with respect to any deviations from your original plans. We all know that stuff happens, so even the best laid plans can unravel. The key point is to document what you do.

If your analyses were meticulously planned, including the null and alternative hypotheses, statistical tests, significance levels, critical values, etc… they should be relatively straightforward to implement once you have your data collected. Indeed, many researchers have R "scripts" written in advance that they tested on made-up data, such that when the real data are available, the analyses practically do themselves!