MSc Health Studies

Research Module

Summative Assignment Guidelines

This assignment requires you to write a project proposal pertaining to a health related question that you feel should be researched.  The proposal should be 6000 words long (excluding appendices and references) and should be written in accordance with the regulations in your student handbook.   If you have any doubts regarding the nature of the task please contact the module organisers.

A project proposal seeks permission, or funding (or both) to undertake a research study; consequently it must contain a reasoned justification of the question to be investigated, along with details on how the study would be undertaken.  These must be sufficiently detailed/clear that an external assessor (who may not be an expert in this exact field of study) can decide whether or not the permission and/or funding should be awarded.  The exact nature of project proposals varies somewhat from organization to organization however a general template might be:

Introduction

This introduces the question justifying it with reference to the published literature – personal experience may be part of the justification, however this should play at most a minor role.  Literature should not be cited paper by paper – instead you should read around the topic and then write a synthesised account of the current knowledge leading logically to the conclusion that your proposed question would be worthwhile answering; this account should be supported by literature citations.  Usually the intro finishes with a restatement of the question whose relevance has now been justified.   You might also include similar justification for your methods/methodology within the introduction though this could equally well come in the next section.

By the end of this section the reader should understand that your research is worthwhile!!

Methods/Methodology

Principally this section explains what you will do  it may well contain justifications for your approach – however any literature that you include here should be used to support/explain how you will undertake your study.  In essence it says “because I want to know such and such, I will do so and so”.

Subsections within methods often include

The design: very briefly – is it longitudinal, crossover, experimental, survey, quantitative/qualitative, double blind, etc.  very briefly!!

The sample:  where you will obtain it, the criteria and rationale for inclusion/exclusion, methods for sampling etc.

The procedure: what it is that you will do to your sample – send them questionnaires, observer them covertly, take blood samples, look at their records etc.

The data: what information the procedures will generate (this might not be a separate subsection, but might be incorporated into ‘the procedure’ subsection)

The analysis: what sort of qualitative framework would you use in your analysis – what type of statistical methodology might you use, etc.

By the end of this sub-section the reader should have enough information to decide whether or not your approach is likely to work – or whether there are flaws that would need remedied.

Ethics

This could be regarded as a subsection of methods, but frequently is placed on its own.  Although a very brief mention of general ethical principals could be given here, primarily what is required is that you outline the main ethical issues/problems of the proposed study – along with why you feel that your approach minimises or prevents these ethical problems (note, that saying that there are ethical problems, but not indicating a solution would be inappropriate)

Costs

In some proposals this would be a major section; however for the purposes of this assignment it is sufficient that you identify the nature of the main ‘costs’ of your study (you don’t have to price it all up!)

By the end of this section the reader should understand that your research is doable!

Dissemination

In many proposals you would be required to briefly indicate how the information your proposed study would generate would be distributed.

Although you may not have seen many project proposals, they are very similar in nature (if not exactly in content) to well written journal articles.  These too usually have intro/lit review sections followed by methodology/methods sections.  They differ from project proposals in that they usually have results and discussion sections too.  Journal articles are written in the present and past tense – they say how the study was carried out and what the results now tell us.  Project proposals are written in the present and future tense they say what we now know and what we will do in order to find out the answers to our questions.  n.b. a project proposal should not pre-judge the outcome of the study (if you know what the answer will be, then why bother doing the study?!) however it should let the reader know what information the study should generate, and consequently what sorts of questions could be answered on conclusion of the proposed study.

Assessment criteria:

Make sure you are aware of the criteria in your student handbook for academic assessment & classification.  This assignment will be marked according to those guidelines.  Your writing should be clear, coherent, well-structured and logical.

The assignment is no more complex or simple than convincing an ‘intelligent’ reader that there is a good reason for undertaking your proposed study i.e. that the question is ‘worthwhile’ and that the methods proposed should answer that question i.e. that the question is ‘doable’.

A good assignment will justify the question, by means of a logical, well written and sufficiently supported literature review.  The methods/methodologies will be sufficiently well explained/justified/detailed that the reader (who may be a non-expert) will be able to decide whether these methods are likely to produce an answer to the question sought.

A ‘global’ approach will be taken in marking these assignments.  This means that the marker will view your assignment as a whole rather specifically award marks to particular components of your work (i.e. the marker will ask – is this a good proposal, rather than has it got a good intro, has it got good coverage of method, etc. etc. individually).  The rationale for this approach to marking is that depending upon the nature of the question you wish to investigate, the emphasis on different parts of the assignment may vary.

n.b. you are NOT required to carry the study out for this assignment. You are required to write a project proposal regarding a research question that you think should be and could be answered!