[Planning and implementation of research projects in psychosomatic medicine]

Based on experiences of the author in planning and realization of scientific studies the different phases and steps of research process are discussed. Especially in the phases of reflecting and planning of a study, a lot of essential preliminary tasks are quite often missed. Failures in these initial phases of a scientific study lead to difficulties in collecting and evaluating of data. Important steps in the different phases of a project are reported in an overview. Finally some typical failures and faults in psychosomatic research made by physicians and social scientists are mentioned.