OSH7016 Research Project Dissertation Proposal

Introduction to the topic
• This section should provide an introductory overview of what is already known about your topic under investigation. It should have sufficient detail to establish the relevance of the issue to your degree subject and why it is important to research this topic. You should also identify a ‘research gap' that your research project will aim to fill.

Research question
State a general research question. This research question should be:
• Clear - easily understood, unambiguous
• Specific - concepts in the question are specific enough to link to particular data indicators (i.e. what will be measured/ assessed).
• Of appropriate scope - not too broad or too narrow, as you will struggle to develop a strong argument.
• Relevant to your degree subject - if you are unsure about the relevance of your chosen topic and question, discuss with your project supervisor
• Researchable - you must have access to a suitable amount of quality research material, such as academic books and journal articles.
• Analytical rather than descriptive - it should analyse an issue or problem, not describe. Typically, we are looking for how and why questions, rather than what or describe (you may also want to use critique, argue, examine or evaluate).
To support your main research question, you should be able to identify approximately 3 sub-questions that also meet the above criteria. This section should be 250 to 300 words.

Literature search strategy
This section describes the systematic and methodical approach to searching the literature for relevant articles and information. This section should be 250 to 300 words.
• A clear rationale for the keywords and data sources should be presented. These should link to concepts in the research question.
• The strategy should incorporate all sources of literature relevant to the research question (including grey literature where appropriate).
• Students are recommended to use a structured approach to help devise their strategy (e.g. PICO, PEO or SPICE).

Methods
Empirical or scoping review? Will your study collect primary data? And if so, will that data be quantitative, qualitative or a combination of the two? Or will you be conducting a scoping review? You need to justify why you have chosen this research method and why it is most appropriate to answer your research question.

This section should be 750 to 1000 words

For an empirical project, your methods section comprises of 3 sections:

1. Design and sample selection:
This section should clearly describe how you will conduct research to answer your research question. This section should not merely describe the method used but apply it to your research project and explain how it answers the aims you are proposing. Include consideration of the following areas:
• If you are conducting an empirical project, explain how you will sample the population you are interested in. Quantitative studies should indicate the sampling method you are going to use (e.g. opportunistic, random, stratified). Clearly explain who this population is and a rough number you aim to sample. Where possible, students are encouraged to conduct a power analysis (guidance found here). Students conducting a qualitative study should indicate how many participants they are going to sample. If a case study approach is proposed, the basis for selecting the case(s) to be explored in detail should be made clear.
Sufficient detail should be provided to enable a judgement to be made about the appropriateness of the study design in answering the research question. It is expected that this and the following sections will be supported by references from credible research methodological sources.

2. Data collection methods and ethical research practice:
This section should clearly describe how you intend to gather data or otherwise conduct your study. Many different methods exist, including interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, monitoring/ sampling, observation, and others. The study methods you choose should be appropriate for the research question and study design.

You should clearly explain the proposed research tool you are planning to use, for example questionnaire/survey, interview schedule etc. and what the aim of using this tool is.

If a new data collection tool is being devised, the approach for developing and piloting the instrument should be outlined.
If an existing data collection tool is being used, their background should be explained and evaluated, particularly in relation to reliability and validity.

The explanation of data collection methods should highlight the relevant ethical issues and the steps being taken to ensure ethical practice. Students are directed to the guidance on ethical approval applications available on the University website (link here).

Approach to data analysis:

This section should clearly describe the approach to data analyses that you propose to take. It shows how you will use the data from the proposed research tool to answer your research question/ aim. This approach should be appropriate to your method which you stated above.

Sufficient detail should be provided to show that it is possible to answer your research question from the data you propose to collect.

For quantitative studies, consider the type of comparison you are trying to make (e.g., difference over time, correlation between two variables or a difference between two groups) and the type of inferential statistics you are proposing to establish whether any differences or association is observed.

For qualitative studies, consider the type of comparison you are trying to make (e.g., difference over time, correlation between two variables or a difference between two groups) and the type of inferential statistics you are proposing to establish whether any differences or association is observed.

For a scoping review, your methods section comprises of 3 sections:

1. Search strategy
Describe all the information sources in the search and the search terms you are planning to use. For a scoping review,a detailed search criteria should be proposed. You should use the PRISMA Scoping Review Extension as guidance here.

To choose search terms you may want to find alternative keywords or phrases for your concepts. Before you finalise your search strategy, you should search for your concepts in a search engine like Google Scholar, scanning the results for alternative words and phrases. You can also examine relevant abstracts or articles for alternative words, phrases and subject headings.

When you have done this, you should have lists of words and phrases for each concept, which you can present in the PICO model (example here), PEO model (example here) or SPIDER (example here). You should also include examples of where you have truncation (i.e. therap*) or wildcards (behavi?r) to find variations in your search terms. If you have used Boolean Operators (i.e. AND, OR, NOT) you should include these and mention how you have used these (i.e. physical therap* AND behavio?r change).

2. Inclusion/ Exclusion criteria
You should specify the characteristics of the sources you will use as an eligibility criteria. The main ones are: 1) years of publication considered (e.g., 2012 to 2022) and your rationale for choosing this period; 2) language (i.e., English only or others; if you will use other languages, you should also specify how you will deal with the translation of these); and 3) publication status (i.e. peer-reviewed, pre-print or grey literature) and provide a rationale for this.

3. Critical Appraisal Tool
Provide a description of the Critical Appraisal tools you will use. This is commonly either Joanna Briggs (found here) or the CASP checklist (found here). There are also an existing set of critical appraisal tools available on the SHS7000 Applied Research Methods and Design module. module. When using these it is better to stick to one checklist for all studies, rather than switching between the two throughout your work. It is also important that you choose the tool that is most appropriate to the type of paper you are reviewing (i.e., using the RCT tool to appraise an RCT study).

Potential Risks
This section should describe the potential hazards, risks and adverse effects for participants in the research. If possible, you should also specify the probability and seriousness in each case. For research which involves interviews, focus groups or questionnaires as the data collection tool, any risk of psychological or social ill effects should be considered.
You should also explain how you will mitigate the risks that you have identified. For all projects explain how you will mitigate against any risk of data loss or data privacy issues (i.e., all data should be saved on a student's One Drive, not their personal hard drive). When conducting interviews, focus groups or questionnaires you should also consider how you are ensuring participant anonymity (i.e., saving consent forms in a different place to their response).

Research project implementation plan
This section should include a timescale for each step of your project from submitting this research proposal through to final submission. You should show approximate dates for each step and any risks to successful completion of the project and how you will manage these risks.

References
• List all references you have cited in alphabetical order at the end of your assignment, using the Harvard referencing system.

Attachment:- Research Project.rar