LECTURES RESEARCH METHODS FOR
HEALTH SCIENCES
INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES, RESEARCH OBJECTIVES, AND RESEARCH
QUESTIONS
Learning goals lecture 1:
- Students are able to identify current and complex public health challenges
- Students are able to explain different epistemological stances (e.g., objectivism, constructivism),
theoretical perspectives (e.g., positivism, interpretivism) and the relationship between them
- Students can define and give examples of epistemic injustice in health sciences
- Students can reflect on their own positionality
- Students are able to formulate an objective and research questions
Literature: Gray Chapter 1 + 2 + 3 (‘selecting a research topic’, ‘topics to avoid’, ‘research questions and
hypotheses’)
CURRENT/COMPLEX PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES
LIST OF CURRENT PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES
- Climate crisis/ environmental impact on health
- Opiod crisis
- Making health care fairer
- Access to medicine
- Health care delivery in areas of conflict and crisis
- Preparing of epidemics
- Anti-microbial resistance
- Public trust (social media misinformation/disinformation)
- Ethical and social implications of new technologies
- Data modernization and privacy
- Food insecurity and food deserts
- Public Health workforce shortage
ARE THESE CURRENT ISSUES ALSO COMPLEX?
Across all disciplines, at all levels, and throughout the world, healthcare is becoming more complex
What make the current challenges complex:
- Globalization ‘a world that is becoming increasingly integrated and interdependent
- Fuzzy, instead of rigid, boundaries
- Internalized rules drive action
- Agents within the system change
- Systems are embedded in other systems and co-evolved
In order to understand and address these complex problems in Health Sciences we need a range of methods
methodologies theoretical perspectives and epistemologies
,RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EPISTEMOLOGY, THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES, METHODOLOGY, AND
METHODS
- Bewildering array of theoretical perspectives and methodologies
- Terminology applied is often inconsistent
EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEM
Epistemology = study of knowledge
In other words, it is the study of what constitutes valid knowledge
DO YOU HAVE A THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE?
You have your own theory of knowledge: starts developing at a very early age
WHY IS EPISTEMOLOGY IMPORTANT?
- A knowledge of research philosophy will help the researcher to recognize which designs will work (for
a given set of objectives) and which will not
- It can find help to clarify issues of research (but also misunderstandigs/tensions) design especially in
interdisciplinary teams
EPISTEMOLOGY
- Objectivism:
o Reality exists independently of consciousness – in other words, there is an objective reality
‘out there’. Research is about discovering this objective truth. Researchers should strive not
to include their own feelings and values.
▪ Wijst het subjectivisme niet af, maar je moet als subjectieve het zo objectief bekijken
o Connected to theoretical perspective Positivism: There is only one reality/truth. Reality can
be measured. Knowledge can be formulated into laws.
o This view has been challenged. Post-positivism we can only approximate the truth: RCT’s
- Constructivism:
o Truth and meaning do not exist in some external world but are created by the subject’s
interactions with the world. Meaning is constructed not discovered. Subjects construct their
own meaning in different ways, even in relation to the same phenomenon
, ▪ Wijst objectivisme af
o Connected to theoretical perspective ‘Interpretivism’: Multiple, contradictory but equally
valid accounts of the world can exist. Knowledge is contextual.
Voorbeeld:
- Subjectivism:
o Meaning is imposed by the subject on the object. Subjects do construct meaning, but do so
from within collective unconsciousness, from cultural and religious beliefs, etc.
▪ Knowledge does not emerge from interaction. The person is constructing the object
and gives meaning to it
o Postmodernism can be taken as an example of a theoretical perspective linked to
subjectivism. Postmodernism emphasis multiplicity, ambiguity, ambivalence and
fragmentation.
- Critical inquiry:
o This critical form of research is a meta-process of investigation, which questions currently
held values and assumptions and challenges conventional social structures.
o The critical inquiry perspective is not content to interpret the world but also seeks to change
it
▪ You want to understand the world and change it. You want to question power
dynamics and social structures
o The assumptions that lie beneath critical inquiry are that: Ideas are mediated by power
relations in society.
o Why is this important: the choice for a certain epidemiology has its impact on the theoretical
perspective, methodology and methods in your research
▪ Objectivism → positivism → survey research → questionnaire
▪ Constructivism → interpretivism → phenomenological research →
interview/focusgroup
▪ Subjectivism → postmodernism → discourse analysis → content analysis
▪ Critical inquiry → etnography → observation/interview
- Epistemic injustice:
o Injustice related to knowledge e.g., exclusion, silencing, misrepresentation, undervaluing.
o Global Health / Health Sciences is a field where there still is the tendency to disregards local
and indigenous knowledge, and refuses to learn from people often deemed to be lesser.
, OBJECTIVE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
RESEARCH PROCESS
Volgens gray 2 manieren om research topic te genereren:
1.Literature
2.Problems and questions of the workplace or community setting
TOPICS: AVOID RESEARCH DISASTERS
- Too big
- Too trivial
- Lack of resources, materials and people
- Dependent on the completion of another project
- Unethical
SOME EXAMPLES: HOW TO GET A TO A RESEARCH TOPIC
1. Own previous research
2. Experiences from fieldwork
3. Donor Informed
4. Patient/patient organization informed
5. Interviewing experts and develop a new research agenda
FROM TOPIC TO THE OBJECTIVE AND RESEARCH QUESTION
- What is the broad area of research
- What is known/done about it
- What is not known/done about it
- (why is this a problem)
- Therefore, the aim of this study is … (I am going to make known about it) = Objective
- Research questions (plus sometimes hypotheses)
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