General guidelines: Each student will choose a health topic with which to develop a literature review and will state that topic as a research question. It is to your benefit to use this class as a stepping stone to your thesis or applied project if applicable. If done correctly you will have a rough draft of your applied project/thesis proposal by the end of this course.
This proposal is divided into two sections Chapter 1: Literature Review and Chapter 2: Methods. Each section has a separate due date and will undergo a peer review. You will develop a research question and search the peer-reviewed literature to help develop a research proposal from that information. You should have between 10 and 15 peer-reviewed articles to use in the paper. If you find less than 10, choose another question or expand your topic.
Chapter 1 will be a comprehensive literature review found on your topic area with an introduction of the topic, research question(s), and a statement of the research objectives. Here you will provide a clear statement of the purpose or hypothesis to be tested, an overview of the problem or subject as it is known from the literature. Basically you are providing a rationale for why you are doing this study/project. It should provide a unique and valuable reference resource for other scholars in your field. This section will be relatively short (8-10 pages) and focused on the scientific studies of the question reported in the peer-reviewed literature. Articles from the popular media can only be used as background, i.e., to establish the interest in the question. This chapter should be a thorough review of the literature. This should include a good transition between the broad topic to narrower topics. This section should include a comparison and contrast between articles that are conflicting. In some cases, you will have found no conflicting literature that is fine, but be sure to state so in that section. At the end of this chapter you should have a summarization of why your research question is important enough to study how is it unique?
Discuss and identify the health problem with appropriate scientific references from broad to specific (eg. Global, national, state, city)
Identify priority population Show relationship to proposed population (Why is it a problem and why should it be dealt with?)
Identify and discuss other studies that addressed this same issue (approach and outcomes)
Chapter 2 is a methods section. The method section explains the methods and procedures used in a research study or experiment. You should provide detailed information about the research design, participants, equipment/instruments, materials, variables, and actions that will be taken by the participants. This section also consists of a data analysis section (what types of statistical tests will you use to answer your research questions). The method section should provide enough information to allow other researchers to replicate your experiment or study. Last will be your reference list. You may use whatever style of referencing is appropriate for your area Health Promotion students are expected to use APA style.
