HSC08 Scheme of Work V1
A Level Health & Social Care/Schemes of work/Version 1.0
Unit Title HSC08: Using and Understanding Research (Optional)
This unit enables you to gain an understanding of research and research methods in one the following sectors: health, social care, children and young people or community justice, and gives you the opportunity to analyse background literature related to your chosen area of study.
The unit requires you to carry out your own piece of research by choosing, designing and carrying out a simple study which will demonstrate your understanding of research methods. You must use primary and secondary data. The process is as important as the findings, as evidenced by the inclusion by all students of a reflective log.
This will be an opportunity to explore an area of interest which may be linked to your intended career pathway. For example, if you wished to be a primary school teacher, you could carry out a piece of research on rewards systems in a primary school, or if you wished to pursue a career in the police, you might investigate attitudes into crime in your local area.
Method of assessment – Portfolio of evidence and completed reflective log
Topic / Learning objectives / understanding / Key terms / definitions / Suggested activities / Resources3.8.1
The role and impact of research within the health, social care, children and young people and community justice sectors / Learn about large research bodies and their role in conducting research, which affects the work of the four sectors.
Examples of these organisations are:
· Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
· Medical Research Council (MRC)
· Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Know how research can be used to:
· Improve service delivery
· Test and review existing knowledge
· Explore social trends and influence policy making
Be able to give examples of each of these areas. / Research body
ESRC
MRC
ONS
Social trend / Brainstorm ideas of research which may be of interest to each of the four sectors, e.g. levels of juvenile crime in a particular geographical area (CJ), effectiveness of a particular treatment (health) etc.
Consider why it is important that research takes place.
Using the ONS website, investigate crime rates in the local area. Ask students to present a one side summary of their findings (this could link to the difference between qualitative and quantitative data).
Using any newspaper reports on recent pieces of research from the sectors, consider what implications the findings may have for service users and service delivery. / www.esrc.ac.uk
www.mrc.ac.uk
www.ons.gov.uk
www.leverhulme.ac.uk
3.8.2
Methods / Learn about the following primary methods:
Survey method using an interview
· These include the structured interview with a prepared schedule of items and the unstructured, e.g. clinical interview
· Advantages of this method in studying beliefs, attitudes and feelings
· Advantages of structured interviews in enabling comparisons and statistical generalisations to be made
· Advantages of unstructured interviews, including access to qualitative data
· Limitations of both techniques including risk of interviewer bias and inability to reveal cause-effect links
Survey method using a questionnaire
· These include rating scales, open and closed questions
· Time should be taken to devise any questionnaires carefully looking at possible pitfall and carrying out a pilot within the group or target population to avoid error
· Advantages of this method in avoiding effects caused by the presence of the researcher
· Limitations should include low return rate from respondents leading to a self-selected and unrepresentative sample.
Observation
· This is a way of measuring the frequencies of a small range of behaviours using a prepared list of behaviour categories
· Observation studies vary in two main ways. Firstly the choice between participant and non-participant observation. Secondly the choice between overt and covert research.
· Limitations including the possible effect of being observed on the behaviour and physiological state of the participants, ethical issues of privacy and inability to reveal cause-effect links. / Survey
Unstructured interview
Clinical interview
Structured interview
Semi-structured interview
Interview schedule
Items
Qualitative data
Quantitative data
Interviewer bias
Cause-effect link
Questionnaire
Rating scale
Likert scale
Open questions
Closed questions
Target population
Pilot study
Return rate
Sample
Self-selected sample
Unrepresentative sample
Overt observation
Covert observation
Participant observation
Non-participant observation
Behaviour categories
Observer effects
Ethical issues / Watch an episode of a chat show such as Graham Norton or Jonathan Ross. Use this to illustrate an unstructured interview approach. Consider why this is appropriate in this context (advantages). Consider in what circumstances this approach would not be useful.
Students to prepare a schedule of items for an interview with another student. This could be on a topic pre-selected by the teacher. Ensure that there is a mixture of different question types.
Collate responses as a group or individually/in pairs. Present qualitative and quantitative data in appropriate formats.
Look at examples of census questionnaires and discuss uses of the data collected.
British Crime Survey, victim surveys and self-report studies as examples of research into crime and deviance.
Observational study of the school/college common room. Tally charts to record certain types of behaviour. / “Research Methods in Health, Social and Early Years Care” by Sandy Green. Nelson Thornes.
“AQA A2 Health and Social Care” by Richard Smithson. Philip Allan Updates.
“Researching Health” DVD. Classroom Video Limited.
“An Introduction to Sociology” by
Ken Browne
3.8.3 Sampling / Learn about the following ways of selecting a sample from the target population and the times when a sampling frame would be used:
· Random sampling
· Quota sampling
· Cluster sampling
· Opportunity sampling
· Volunteer sampling
· Snowball sampling
Be aware of the advantages and limitations of all these sampling techniques. Understand that a small sample is likely to be unrepresentative of the target population, however it is selected. / Sampling frame
Random sample
Quota sample
Cluster sample
Opportunity sample
Volunteer sample
Snowball sample
Representative sample
Unrepresentative sample / Teacher to prepare a list of topics. Students to select which sampling techniques may be appropriate for each area.
Advantages and limitations of each. / “Research Methods in Health, Social and Early Years Care” by Sandy Green. Nelson Thornes.
“AQA A2 Health and Social Care” by Richard Smithson. Philip Allan Updates.
3.8.4
Ethical issues / Understand that different methods of research give rise to different ethical problems. Ethical issues you should be aware of include:
· Deception about the aim or the hypothesis being studied
· Temporary deception (during the research procedure) is often necessary in order to avoid participant bias or demand characteristics. However this deception should be mild (for example telling a person that the study is about measuring physical fitness, when it is in fact about the effect of exercise on mood). Any such deception should be corrected by explanation in a debriefing following data collection. Serious deception (for example falsely telling a participant that someone they know has been injured in an accident) should not be practised
· Participants’ experience of embarrassment or distress. Researchers should be sensitively aware of the likely responses of others which might be different from the researcher’s own likely responses as a participant.
Understand the ethical precautions researchers should use with participants, including:
· Maintaining confidentiality. Participants’ names should not be reported
· Seeking informed consent. The initial request to the participant should outline what will be required of them during the study, and indicate how much time it will take. The participant should be specifically offered the option not to take part
· Giving an explicit right to withdraw from a research procedure at any time.
· Debriefing, this should be done as soon as possible after the research procedure is finished, normally immediately afterwards; debriefing should enable the participant to understand what the research was about, to tell them what will happen to the results and to invite and answer the participants’ questions. The researcher must use his/her own judgement about telling participants what they scored on any measures. If participants wish to know, they should be told, but the researcher should avoid passing judgement on how well or badly a participant performed. / Ethical issues
Deception
Participant bias
Demand characteristics
Debriefing
Distress
Individual viewpoints
Confidentiality
Informed consent
Right to withdrawn
Debriefing / Video of the Stanford Prison experiment. Discussion of ethical issues from this study. What steps should/could have been taken?
Practice writing ethical statements (could use examples from old HC11 coursework).
Student led research into examples of research which may be considered unethical. / “Research Methods in Health, Social and Early Years Care” by Sandy Green. Nelson Thornes.
“AQA A2 Health and Social Care” by Richard Smithson. Philip Allan Updates.
3.8.5
Results / * Numerical data should be processed to produce summary data in the form of percentages, and the mean, median and modal results as appropriate
· Results should be presented clearly using descriptive statistics, i.e. pie charts, tables and bar charts where appropriate to aid understanding. / Check that all students know how to calculate percentages. Brief session covering this as appropriate.
Colleague from ICT to present a session on graphs and how to alter default computer settings. / “The Good Study Guide” by Andrew Northedge. Open University Press.
3.8.6 Assessment
You need to produce a portfolio of evidence and reflective log choosing one area of research, which relates to one of the four sectors. When you are doing this, other units in your health and social care course or a career that you are interested in pursuing might influence your choice of topic. Then, you will find out about previously-published literature into this area, which will help you to design, carry out and report on your own empirical study, which should include primary data which you have collected yourself.
Your portfolio of evidence should not be a shared exercise or based on a whole group topic, but wholly your own work. Work which does not demonstrate independence cannot be awarded high marks.
Your work for assessment must include the following sections and subsections:
Section A: The completed reflective log
The reflective log forms part of the CRF and can be found on www.aqa.org.uk under coursework administration. The log should be completed throughout the research process. Although the responsibility for this lies mainly with the student, there is one section for the teacher to complete.
Section B: Role and impact of research
This section requires you to show understanding of the role and impact of research for the sector you have chosen. You should seek out specific examples of research, which illustrate how research can be used to improve service delivery, test and review existing knowledge and explore social trends and influence policy-making.
Section C: Review of background literature
A great deal of care needs to be taken over the selection of background literature since the choice will have a bearing of success later. The literature can include media articles, websites and references to previous studies.
The evidence should:
· provide scope to explore the validity and reliability of the evidence. For example you should be able to appreciate possible sources of bias according to who has produced the evidence. You may seek out various viewpoints comparing perhaps the presentation of evidence from tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.
· Provide scope for you to make assumptions about research methods, sampling methods and ethical issues
· Be clearly referenced in the bibliography.
The background literature should clearly lead on to your proposed area of study.
Section D: The research project
This should comprise five subsections:
D.1: Rationale
Why have you chosen this area of interest? Why does this area merit investigation? You should include key findings from your literature search to help justify your choice. You also need to show how, as a result of your background research, the topic you have selected merits investigation.
This section should end with a clear focus for the investigation where you define the research hypothesis or research questions that you intend to investigate.
D.2: Methods
You should have considered the advantages and disadvantages and fully justified the use of the method(s) you have used. You may discuss why other methods were not suitable for this type of research.
D.3: Sampling
You should have correctly identified the sampling techniques used with full understanding of their advantages and disadvantages for your chosen area of study. Similarly you may have discussed why other sampling techniques were not suitable for this specific piece of research.
D.4: Ethical issues
Ethical issues should have been comprehensively applied to the research with a full appreciation of their possible impact of your research. An ethical statement should be included which outlines all ethical precautions taken.
D.5: Results
Results should be presented clearly using descriptive statistics, i.e. pie charts, tables and bar charts only where appropriate to aid understanding.
Conclusions should be sound and consistent with the data presented. There should be evidence of analysis of qualitative and quantitative data where appropriate.
Section E: Evaluation
There should be a clear reference to the research hypothesis/question and a comprehensive explanation that determines whether this was answered. The validity, reliability and representativeness of the findings should be analysed comprehensively.
In summary there should be:
· advantages and disadvantages of methods used for your area of study
· how far the hypothesis or research question has been answered
· how far the findings matched the literature search
· strengths and weaknesses of the evidence obtained
· validity, reliability and representativeness of evidence obtained.
Finally there should be recommendations for improvements and future research.
Section F: Appendix
This should include examples of materials used, raw data with calculations and a reference section which provides references for all studies/secondary sources cited in the portfolio of evidence.
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