Alternatives for "conducted" with respect to research

Solution 1:

You actually can’t conduct a research, because it is not a count noun.

But you can conduct, do, pursue, guide, lead, head, preside over, or engage in research.

Other more courageous terms include chaperon, shepherd, and trailblaze.

Solution 2:

Can you use:

Scientists. . .

"studied"

"researched"

"evaluated"

"analyzed"

Solution 3:

Besides the suggestions offered already, you could look up synonyms of conduct in a thesaurus. This should give you candidates such as directed, performed, oversaw, etc.

Another alternative is to query a collocations database such as this one. Querying it with the string [v?d*] research threw up words such as established, compiled, and pursued.