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Aim of the course- To build the capacity of health researchers to develop good quality health research proposals

Course description-

In this course, we will train participants to frame research questions with clarity, choose appropriate designs to answer the question, choose appropriate research methods and develop a proposal with attention to quality and ethical principles. It is a 4 month course that is provided through an online platform.

We include an introduction to ontology and epistemology in research and highlight the influence of one’s position as a researcher on framing the research question. We have tried in this course to move from the rather artificial divide of Qualitative and Quantitative research to thinking of how the research question should be answered.

The participants will be able to develop research proposals that have coherence between the research question, design, methods, data collection tools and the analysis plan. We also introduce the concept of complexity in health research and encourage students to keep this in mind while developing research questions.

The participants will be able to appreciate that cause and effect are not usually a linear process in health research and looking at other effects would enrich the research.

We also introduce ethical principles and ethical issues that may arise at each stage of the research process so that the researchers are sensitised to this from the beginning and do not begin to think of these not at the time of submission to the ethics committee.

At the end of this course the participants will be able to develop a good research proposal that they can then submit to relevant authorities for funding.