Research Methods 1

Research is essential to maintain and improve the care and service offered by public health/ primary care professionals and throughout the health services. For research to be effective, those working in this area should be equipped to understand research findings and also to understand research design. This module equips students to do this.

Aims

1. To enable you to develop an answerable research question  (sessions 1 & 2)
2. To obtain the skills needed to search for and use literature appropriately  (sessions 3 & 4)
3. To be able to choose an appropriate research method (sessions 5,6,7,9,10)  The module is organised into three parts, dealing with these aims in turn.

Session Topics

Introduction to research methods

The research process

Searching for and using quantitative literature

Searching for and using qualitative literature

Reading Week

Qualitative observational studies

Quantitative observational studies

Presentation of proposed research

Action research and qualitative evaluation studies

Questionnaire design

Study groups

To enable small group work in the sessions, and to allow for online discussion via WebCT, students will be allocated to a study groups. For the online discussion, each group will be facilitated by one of the module team tutors.You will have an opportunity within each session to discuss some of the material presented with your study group. Each week one person in the group should take the lead and be responsible for posting a short summary (about 50 words) on the study group discussion board.  You can continue your discussion about material presented during the sessions by using the WebCT discussion board. Your tutor facilitator will contribute to the discussion each week by posting comments on the discussion board.

Formative Assessment

There are two pieces of formative assessment; a literature review and the preparation of a research idea for presentation to the group.  Neither of the formative assessments count towards your final mark. They are designed to help you consolidate your learning in preparation for the summative assessments at the end of this module.

Summative Assessment

There are two summative assessments for this module.

Assignment 1 is an exam lasting one hour.

 It involves questions on qualitative and quantitative research methods covered in the module.
 It carries 30% of the marks.

Assignment 2 is a written assignment of 2000 words and carries 70% of the marks.

You are asked to present an answerable research question, explaining clearly:

• Why you have chosen this research question, justifying your answer with references to appropriate literature. 
• What method you have chosen to answer the question, why this method is the most suitable and why other methods are less suitable 
• how you would approach the following for your method: 
• how many participants to include 
• who you would include and exclude 
• how you would recruit participants 
• how you would obtain consen