You can either pick a public health problem or a leadership need.
Since this is a course on leadership, you will first develop a problem statement that describes some aspect of a public health issue that needs leadership attention. Focusing solely on a public health problem will not answer the question. The public health issue should address leadership. If you chose a leadership issue, remember this is a public health course, the leadership issue should be important for public health.
Literature review – After you select a topic, you will do a literature review. The literature review template under resources is a useful tool to document key information in the literature. For the actual paper remember to synthesize all the literature you collected. This is an important issue, a link from the Writing Center on how to synthesize a literature review is given: http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/50.htm
You also must describe theoretical gaps in the literature. Based on your review of the literature what gaps did you find that could be turned into a research project? (Don’t worry, you won’t be actually conducting the research).
Problem statement – At this point you have a topic, have reviewed the literature, and have identified a gap in the literature. We know write a problem statement. A problem statement is a clear statement describing the problem and the focus of a study. Explain why the study is worthy, address the literature gap, and include implications for positive social change.
Leadership Theory – This is where you develop a leadership theory to address the problem in your problem statement. The leadership theory should be your very own that integrates concepts of varies theories from the course, but remember to explain in detail how your theory will address the problem.
Visual – Using a schematic diagram or matrices, you will develop your leadership theory into a visual representation and explain how it incorporates systems thinking. If a visual from another source is used, provide the citation and explain why someone else’s visual is appropriate for connecting your leadership theory with your problem statement.
Empirical evaluation – In week 11 you will assess if the newly developed leadership theory addresses the problem you have been working on. What methodological steps will you use? How will you collect data? Suggestion – start with how theories in our text are evaluated, it does not have to be detailed, but it must include the methods, measures and analytic techniques.
If the assignments are done correctly, there should be an alignment from the topic of choice to the evaluation:
Your topic is researched in the literature Your literature review points out a theoretical gap that needs to be addressed by leadership The gap is turned into a problem statement You propose a leadership theory to address the problem The theory is depicted in a visual; and finally Your evaluation describes how you would determine if the newly developed theory solves the problem.
The goal of the Scholar Practitioner Project is to use evidence-based strategies to develop a Personal Leadership Theory that integrates leadership theories to help solve public health issues. To do this the assignments in week 5, 7 and 11 should align together. This may seem daunting now, but it is broken up into three assignments over 7 weeks, starting from week 5, week 8 and week 11.
