The End of Module Assignment offers the opportunity to practice identifying areas for research and designing appropriate research tools for use with human participants. The assignment is broken into two parts. The first part asks you to conduct a systematic literature search to identify a research topic and the second asks you to design an appropriate research tool to investigate the topic.
Part 1 (1500 words)
Conduct a literature search on a health topic of your choosing. You should consider the related task in Part 2 before deciding on your topic to be sure that it is appropriate. Detail each stage of the literature search including your chosen framework, keywords, search sources and results. You may wish to present the results of your search in a flowchart indicating the number of searches and the progression of your search. (500 words)
Critically appraise the literature on your chosen health topic to identify a research need. (1000 words)
You should summarise this part by identifying a research question which can be investigated. For more on how to define a research question, click here.
Part 2 (1000 words)
Design and present a data collection instrument which fits your research question. You may design a qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods data collection instrument.
Describe your data collection instrument with consideration for the following; suitability of your instrument to meet the research question, rationale for your choice of instrument, instructions for its use, potential bias, how you may involve participants in the design of the instrument and ethical considerations related to it’s use. Your ethical considerations may include, consent procedures, collection, storage and identification of sensitive information or participant data, participant withdrawal procedures and any other ethical considerations related to your instrument.
The types of data collection instruments you could design could include questionnaires, semi-structured interview schedules, focus group schedules and participant observation guidelines. Further methods may be considered provided you can describe the methodology in detail as a separate methodology instrument.
You should attach your data collection instrument to your assignment as an appendix.
Important Note-This is a hypothetical exercise; you should not approach any participants to complete your instrument. However, you should reflect upon the real-world issues that may be presented when engaging with human participants in research.