Type of courses
Elective courses
Course Outline
This course aims to apply scientific research method to address the research questions of interest in the five main fields of public health (epidemiology and preventive medicine, biostatistics, health behavior and community sciences, health policy and management, and environmental health and sciences). Students are imparted by how to use experimental and quasi-experimental design both of which have been widely used in biomedicine, social science, medicine, and public health. To render student be familiar with scientific papers with high quality control of study design and analysis, checklists used in quantitative and qualitative researches such as CONSORT, STROBE, and COREQ checklists are also taught. After course, attendees are able to formulate study hypothesis in relation to the field on their own to study questions using quantitative, qualitative methods, or the mixed method. Systematic review and synthesis science such as meta-analysis are also provided in this course. Validity and reliability of reach quality are also provided in this course. This course was taught both online and in-class courses. For qualitative researches, the computer software of ATLAS.ti will be used for students to learn how to apply computer programming to extract the context and themes based on the transcript of interview for selected public health issues. For quantitative researches, students are required to analyze data and interpret the results independently with the programming codes or suitable models by using SAS software. In the end of this course, students’ ability was assessed by 40 selective questions, computer exercises and oral interview. The follow-up study would be designed to compare the performance between the two groups.
Course Objective:
The objective of this course is to develop students with the potential of being able to design and complete the study in relation to public health with good scientific research methodogy. Specifically, we are tempted to impart students to provide the following competences:
1. To design the study with hypothesis using both experimental and quasi-experimental design
2. To be familar with both quantitative and quantitative methods
3. To execute the study with high quality of scientific methods
Course Requirement:
1. Class participation with team-based discussion