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Section outline
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INSTRUCTOR:
Aline UMUBYEYI, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Public Health
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
E-mail: a.umubyeyi@ur.ac.rw
OTHER SUPPORT
Library, CMHS.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course is intended for all students registered for Master programs. The course covers keys components of research methods from the literature review to the full protocol development. Selected topics covered in lectures include literature search techniques, research design, sample size calculation, sampling strategies, and questionnaires design as well as the research protocol development. The course will have both theoretical and practical aspects.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
= Overall Objectives
- To improve student’s ability to design sound research studies
- To provide practical skills to students to be able at the end of the course to produce their research protocol for their dissertation.
= Specific Learning Objectives:
To enable students to search and use sound literature published in peer reviewed journals
- To become familiar with a variety of design options for public health studies
- To enable student to select and apply methods for the control of error and bias
- To provide students with skills to do proper sample size calculations and use appropriate sampling strategies.
- To improve student ability to interpret and criticize published data
- To enable students to develop a research protocol.
EVALUATION:
The written developed individual full protocol per student dissertation that will be assessed by its content (written proposal) that will contribute to 30% to the final grade and by its oral presentation that will contribute to 30% to the final grade.
- The final 40% of your grade will focus on the application of the concepts learned throughout the course. This is a module written exam.
COURSE CONTENT:
The following learning objectives for each session of this unit have been prepared to assist you in your preparation for the master’s comprehensive examination in the area of research methods. A review of content related to these learning objectives should provide you with the foundation required for successful mastery of the content.
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Session content
- Reviewing the literature: Why? for whom? And How?
- Online bibliography data bases: JSTOR, PBMED, HINARI
- Use of Boolean operators and Medical sub headings (MESH)
- Synthesizing the results
Session learning objectives:
- Students should be familiar with conducting a literature review for a scholarly health problems (steps in the overall process, types of databases often searched in the area of health, the criteria for evaluating the quality of a study, the way of organizing the materials found)
- To create the evidence based objectives or hypothesis.
- To identify a new research problem based on a knowledge gap identified.
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Session content
- Mendeley software: step by step using
Session learning objectives:
- To create a library
- To manage documents and references
- To cite and share references.
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Session content
- Introduction to research
- Procedural steps in research
- Epidemiologic studies
- Bias, confounders and ways to control for them
Session learning objectives:
- To provide basic introduction to research methods and techniques
- Students should understand a general definition of research design
- To identify the overall process of designing a research study from its inception to its report
- To describe different types and characteristics of quantitative research methods (epidemiological studies) and know the primary characteristics of quantitative research and qualitative research
- To identify different types of errors existing in research studies that can jeopardize the findings.
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Session content
- Power and sample size
- Key definitions and concepts
- Sample size for population survey
- Sample size for cohort studies
- Sample size for case-control studies
- Sample size for panel data
Session learning objectives:
- To define key concepts for the sample size calculation
- To identify different parameters needed for the sample size calculations
- To identify different methods of calculating the sample size for different study designs
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- Basic concepts
- Simple random sampling
- Systematic sampling
- Sampling with stratification
- Cluster and multi-stage sampling
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Session content:
- This part covers the steps in questionnaires design:
- Research question(s)/hypotheses
- Analysis plan (dummy tables)
- Variables to be measured
- Questionnaire administration
- Formulation of questions
- Sequence of questions
- Layout and design of the questionnaire
- Data entry and coding
- Translation
- Interviewers’ training
- Piloting test
Session learning objectives:
- Describe the steps in designing a questionnaire
- Describe how a questionnaire can be made more user-friendly for respondents and data-entry personnel
- Create a practical field questionnaire addressing a research question
- Explain the process to pilot-test a questionnaire
- Students should be familiar with the steps involved in identifying and selecting a good instrument to use in a study.
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Session content:
- Keys components of a research protocol
- Presentation of a research protocol for appropriate approval
- Interviewer’s selection / recruitment
- Fieldwork plan
- Fieldwork infrastructure (cars, labs equipment, anthropometrics, others…)
Session learning objectives:
- Students should be able to design a good quantitative purpose statement and good quantitative research questions and hypotheses.
- Students should know the steps in the process of quantitative data collection
- Students should understand the link between quantitative research questions and data collection and how research questions are operationalized in research practice
- Students should be able to develop a successful study design and understand the steps in developing a good research protocol
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