HLTH462-21S2 (C) Semester Two 2021

Quantitative Methods in Health

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 19 July 2021
End Date: Sunday, 14 November 2021
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 1 August 2021
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 1 October 2021

Description

This course will provide students with an understanding of key quantitative methodological issues in health research from the perspective of research designs and development of current best evidence in health.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course students will:

1. Have an enhanced understanding of the dominant quantitative scientific method as commonly employed in health research;
2. Be introduced and be able to critique important philosophical perspectives of competing and augmenting methods and methodologies applied in this type of research;
3. Have an ability to assess and evaluate quantitative health research quality, through implementation of best-practise guidelines and informed critique;
4. Understand of the role of generalisability and external validity of quantitative research findings;
5. Be able to understand, explain, and critically assess predominant study designs within health research – especially as frequently applied by health dissertation and thesis students; and
6. To present both a written and oral overview and critique of research findings for peer review.

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Head of School

Restrictions

Timetable Note

(Th):  Jul 15, 22, 29
(Th):  Aug 5, 12, 19
(Th):  Sep 9, 16, 23, 30
(Th):  Oct 7, 14

Course Coordinator / Lecturer

Philip Schluter

Lecturer

Laurie McLay

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Reflection journals 30% Each week, for the first six weeks of the course, a reflective journal question motivated by the course material will be set. The purpose of this assessment is for you to display an ability to reflect on the concepts discussed in lectures and from your own literature searches, and to demonstrate your ability to express these thoughts succinctly in written form.
Research papers critique 40% The purpose of this component of assessment is to enable you to critique the quality of peer-reviewed published work. In this component, students are invited to self-select two recent quantitative peer-reviewed journal articles (published within the last ten years). For each paper, students will then: (i) identify an appropriate checklist - and complete it (in written form) indicating whether the study satisfactorily met each recommendation; and (ii) critically appraise the paper overall in a summary.
Oral presentation 30% The third and final component of the assessment is an oral presentation to your peers and a panel. For this assessment you will take one of the two papers that formed part of the second component of your assessment, create a 7 minute powerpoint (or similar) presentation - that it designed for an academic audience that has not read the paper. You will need to provide an overview and its aims, briefly describe the methods, results, and conclusions - and then present your critique of the research - supported by the guidelines and your own holistic assessment.

Textbooks / Resources

There are no textbook required readings for this course. However, materials, readings, instructions, etc. are available on LEARN (http://learn.canterbury.ac.nz/)

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,108.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

Minimum enrolments

This course will not be offered if fewer than 5 people apply to enrol.

For further information see School of Health Sciences .

All HLTH462 Occurrences

  • HLTH462-21S2 (C) Semester Two 2021
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