Research Methodology, Design and Methods

QUESTION

Module Summary

This module aims to provide an overview of the key approaches to designing practice healthcare research. It will consider the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of research and critically appraise different design and methodological approaches utilised in health, social sciences, and their related fields of practice. The module will develop the students’ ability to prepare a detailed research proposal relevant to their field of academic study, area of professional practice, or service improvement area. The importance of ethical, social, legal, political, and economic aspects of research studies will be considered

Module Title: Research Methodology, Design and Methods

Learning Outcomes

Make sure you address all the learning outcomes in your writing, which are as follows:

1. Demonstrate understanding of the importance of the philosophical underpinnings of research and its application to designing research studies.
2. Critically review the key steps in research project design, inclusive of appropriate data analysis techniques.
3. Identify and evaluate the importance of the ethical, political, legal, and social issues related to research design.
4. Design a study grounded in an appropriate research approach that investigates an area of relevant health care practice/health care improvement

Indicative Contents/Syllabus/Topic areas

• Material will be delivered in the context of health and social sciences, service improvement methodologies and related fields.
• The philosophy of research
• Theoretical traditions/approaches underpinning research
• Introduction to health care research
• Primary research
• Secondary research
• Quantitative research
• Qualitative research
• Survey methods
• Systematic review/meta-analysis
• Qualitative/narrative based literature
• Critical appraisal •       Structuring research proposals
• Methods and design
• Research questions/statement construction
• Approaches to sampling
• Methods of data collection and analysis
• Reliability and validity/truth/trustworthiness
• Ethical issues and considerations
• Articulating research ideas/presentation skills

Philosophy of the programme

Our intention is to ensure that resources are applicable and transferable to a range of national and local contexts for healthcare practice, the literature base is, therefore, chosen from a range of countries. Content is also designed to encourage you to apply principles and themes of the discussion to your personal role so, sometimes, you are required to analyse the literature as a group and, at other times, you will undertake a search of databases to locate relevant evidence and share your findings with others. The overall aim is, that at the end of this programme, you will be able to draw on your own professional confidence to assess, evaluate and critique the way that healthcare services and practice are organised and developed, in particular in your home country.

 Assessment Task

This module is assessed by the completion of a 3,000-word proposal for a piece of research or a service improvement project.

Component % of module mark       Learning outcomes

A 3000-word research proposal

100%

(15 credits)

All – 1-4 (see below)

Guidelines

You are required to submit a 3 000 – word proposal for a piece of empirical research or secondary research (such as a systematised literature review).

This coursework assesses learning outcomes 1-4. You have a 10% margin either side of this word count, however: A penalty will be applied for work which exceeds or is below the word count by more than 10%, this will be a deduction of 10% of the final mark. Throughout the module you will be encouraged to think of a project relating to your own field of practice and area of work, to guide you towards an appropriate proposal. If you wish to have feedback on the appropriateness of your topic, please contact the Associate Lecturer as soon as possible to arrange this.

Read the programme learning outcomes carefully – you should plan your work to ensure you address all 4 outcomes.

         Guidelines: – Literature Based Project

  Suggested Outline Proposal for a Literature Based Project Proposal

1. A literature-based research project is not a true systematic review, BUT it aims to provide an overview of work in a specific area by finding, evaluating, and

synthesising evidence from research studies. A ‘full’ systematic review (as defined by the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, 1996) follows a set process (including meta-analysis in some reviews) to achieve rigour. However, the general principles and techniques can be used to good effect in providing a comprehensive and critical literature review.)

1. Front page to include Assignment Title, Word Count and Student ID.
2. Context and background to the review (to include any existing reviews or other sources)
3. Scoping Literature review – ensure that in this section, you produce a rationale that justifies a need for the proposed review of published NOT a preliminary review of the research you will be appraising in your project 4. Review question and objective(s) of the review
4. Review epistemology and methodology – explain what kind of review this is, and why
5. Review design – to include

(i)     the databases/search engines that will be used

(ii)     the keywords/phrases that will be used with justification for these

(iii)    the type of paper/article/text that will be excluded e.g., not in English

(iv)    the types of papers/articles/texts that are likely to be included

7. Data analysis – this should include details of how the papers/articles/texts will be analysed; inclusion and exclusion criteria for the papers and how you will rate the quality of the papers
8. Timescale of the review – presented as a table
9. Estimated cost of the review (e.g., purchase of papers/articles/texts travel, stationery, postage, photocopying, typing, etc.) – presented as a table

Reference

Guidelines: (continued) Things to DO

1. Start thinking about your proposal as early as possible
2. Develop a focused, realistic research question for your review
3. Make use of appropriate subheadings to structure and organize your proposal
4. Ensure that, in the scoping literature review section you justify the need for the proposed review and identify key literature that is directly related to your chosen review topic to identify the ‘knowledge gap’ that you hope to inform through the findings from your review
5. Identify the potential significance of the proposed review
6. Who might be expected to benefit and how – say what you are hoping to achieve from your review
7. Have a section outlining your proposed data analysis approach.
8. Reference cited work accurately and consistently using APA Referencing style. Check that all articles, books etc in the reference list are cited somewhere in the text.
9. Proofread your work carefully
10. Read the section on Writing Essays at Master’s Level in the Master’s Student

Handbook

DO NOT

1. Try to tackle a topic that is too broad
2. Produce a largely descriptive proposal with no justification for philosophy / approach / design / methods
3. Turn the literature review in your proposal into a précis of your actual literature review – remember you are PROPOSING a bigger review, not doing it (yet!)

Leave it until the last minute to plan and write your proposal

4. Referencing. APA Referencing Style.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST!

From experience, weak assignments have some combination (or all) of the following shortcomings:

• Lack of clarity on review aims, area of interest and/or questions
• Inadequate background, context, and/or literature review, with little demonstration of critical appraisal
• Limited proposal, containing inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and poor grammatical structure
• Lack of critical thinking – i.e., mostly descriptive writing
• Inappropriate referencing

Presentation & Submission       

All work should be presented in Microsoft Word or a compatible format, one and half or double spaced, in a minimum font size of 12 and the surround (margins) should be at least 2.5cm (1 inch).

Please provide a title page, which must include:

• The module title and code
• The course you are studying
• The title of the assignment
• The date of submission
• The word counts
• Your student number (Not Name)
• You have a 10% margin either side of this word count therefore: 2700– 3300 words. A penalty of 10% of the mark for this work will be applied to submissions that exceed or are below the requirement by 10% or more. This coursework assesses all learning outcomes of this module.

The mark given to an assignment depends on:

• The extent to which the assignment addresses the learning outcomes (see page 1).

How well the assignment meets the criteria in the marking grid as shown in the

Appendix.

Showing originality and avoiding plagiarism

Plagiarism and how to avoid it: Citing sources and referencing in your academic writing Gathering information from a variety of sources is an essential part of most academic writing, and it is important that you reference these sources in the required style. All writers borrow material from other sources at some time, including ideas, information, images, charts, graphs, and statistics. Whenever you use information from other sources you must document the source in two ways:

• provide an in-text citation of the source in the main body of your writing.
• enter the source in the List of References at the end of your document.

You must cite and reference every piece of information that you borrow from another source because it is the intellectual property of the individuals or groups of people who have produced it.

All statements, opinions, conclusions, images, etc. which you have taken from someone else’s work (books, journals, lectures, videos, TV programmes, newspapers, internet pages, etc.) should be acknowledged, whether the work is mentioned, described, reproduced, summarised, paraphrased or directly quoted by you. If the source is produced by an organisation or an official body instead of authors, this is known as a ‘corporate author’ and must be treated in the same way. For example, most websites are produced by a corporate author. This also applies to such organisations that write essays, devise IT coding etc

Appendix 1: Marking Criteria

Criteria

Development and motivation of research question

Very well-developed research question(s): well-motivated with clear links to nursing and healthcare practice and/or previous evidence/literature and any relevant facts/figures that have gone considerably beyond the material introduced in the module. Research question(s) are creative/novel.

Clear outline of methodology

Methodology chosen  to answer research question(s) is fully developed, discussed and appropriate. The justification of methodology goes beyond examples taught and makes critical reference to relevant literature. Limitations to the data and methods well understood and discussed. Methodology used is applied in a novel/creative way.

Use of data and Statistics

Research data and statistics are effectively interpreted. Constructive use of research terms to analyse information such as statistics, regression results and other results. Use of statistics beyond that taught.

Application and critical analysis

Critical analysis of produced evidence and findings which have both depth and breadth. Interpretation and discussion of produced results; rigorously linked to research question(s) and nursing/healthcare practice/evidence. From the literature. Construction of logical/convincing argument with conclusions with implications discussed. Novel/creative insights.