The term ‘health sciences’ is broad, referring to public health, primary care, health psychology, psychiatry and epidemiology. Students in the health sciences are not necessarily aligned to any one discipline. However, there are large numbers of students taking health sciences courses. Although the courses taken tend to differ, the research methods and data analysis skills required are very similar. In most cases, courses require students to:
- locate, understand existing research
- appraise existing research
- design, collect and analyse data from their own research.
There are four themes in health sciences learning and teaching which have all become more prominent in recent years [5]:
- evidence-based practice
- research-based learning
- learning research methods
- linking staff research activity and teaching.
Evidence-based practice is perhaps the most prominent change within the health sciences in recent years. It is defined as the ‘process of systematically finding, appraising and using contemporaneous research findings as the basis for clinical decisions’ [6]. Originating from ‘evidence-based medicine’ [7], it is characterised by a shift from relying on internal knowledge, to relying on both internal and external knowledge:
Internal evidence is composed of knowledge acquired through formal education and training, general experience accumulated from daily practice, and specific experience gained from an individual clinician-patient relationship. External evidence is accessible information from research. It is the explicit use of valid external evidence (eg, randomized controlled trials) combined with the prevailing internal evidence that defines a clinical decision as ‘evidence-based’. [8]
The evidence-based approach is becoming the norm in the health sciences [5], as is the requirement for students to produce their own evidence. Very few books are available which cover both the consumption and the production of research (see Table 1.1 below). More typically, books will either address epidemiology, statistics and critical appraisal (consumption) or research design and data analysis (production) – rarely both.
Currently, students in the health sciences tend to rely on ad hoc combinations of textbooks from nursing, medicine, psychology and social sciences. Existing books rarely offer the breadth and depth to cover health sciences in its entirety, while still appealing to specific subject areas. Health sciences are multidisciplinary, which presents challenges for any book trying to introduce students to research methods covering such diverse areas. However, this book aims to capture the three important strands than run through health sciences research: statistics, critical appraisal and conducting new research. Again, the ability to appraise and conduct research is becoming more strongly emphasised in the health sciences – students need to learn how to do both, but are rarely offered a single book that shows them how.
The book is aimed at postgraduate students studying courses in the health sciences, chiefly in the UK (since many readers will work for the NHS) but also internationally. It should also be relevant for:
- medical undergraduates (e.g. epidemiology, critical appraisal, statistics)
-
research students
- ordinary PhD students
- doctoral students in clinical psychology
Health sciences students have very different backgrounds, and few assumptions can be made about their level of existing knowledge. Unlike vocational subjects, health sciences are drawn from very different levels of experience. This book tries not to make too many assumptions.
In my experience, students in the health sciences have two key concerns – their summative assessment and their requirement to analyse data using appropriate statistical software. The book will support students by linking the exercises and activities to formative assessment (in MCQ format) on the book website. Given that student learning is driven by assessment, I hope that students will appreciate having available a formative tool to guide their learning. Formative assessment allows students to take control of their own learning [9], in preparation for summative assessment.
The second concern is particularly relevant for health sciences students. Many health sciences students work in the NHS or voluntary/community sector, and do not have access to popular statistical packages such as Stata or SPSS (these require a licence). To address the second issue, this book makes reference to the open source statistical package called R. Although this is...
