Guidelines for Students to Write an Essay Report
Before students start writing their report, students should make a plan of what they intend to write. Use the report headings described in the following sections, and jot down a few notes under each of them to guide you when you come to write the report. Consider the best way to present your report, for example, using tables or graphs for numerical data (learned from lectures on statistics and SPSS practical); if you have qualitative data, you may want to include a few direct quotes that illustrate a point you want to make. You might need to check that you have gathered together all the data (e.g., government, WHO, journal articles) and that it has been processed and organized appropriately. Considering each section of the report in turn and planning the contents will make the task of writing it much more manageable.
Components of a report
Your report should contain the components listed in the following:
Cover page
Summary
Table of contents
Introduction
Aim/Objectives/Purpose/Issues
Findings
Discussion, conclusion, and recommendations
References
Annexes/Appendices
Cover page
The cover page of your report should contain the title, your full name, student ID, and the date and year that you submitted the report. The title should include the name of the study theme, for example, ‘Water pipe smoking among university students in Oman’.
Summary
The summary should contain very brief descriptions (Max. 300 words) in the following sequence:
The problem (why this issue/topic need to explore).
The main objectives (what the report set out to achieve).
Information/data used if applicable (e.g. information/data collected from WHO).
Summarizing the major findings and conclusions.
Summarizing the major recommendations.
Table of contents
The Table of contents provides the assessor with a quick overview of the major sections of your report, with the page number of the first page in each section. This enable the person reading to go straight to particular sections of interest.
Introduction
Your introduction should begin by stating the purpose (objectives) of writing this report. Then give some relevant background information about the topic that you are going to explore/discuss, what was previously known about the topic, and any health service data which is relevant to the topic in local/region/global. If possible, you may also include any background information on any relevant environmental, administrative, economic, or social issues. Refer briefly to any additional information which you have obtained from, and any relevant journal publications, reports, or documents you have found helpful in this section.
Aim/objectives/Purpose/Issues
A brief description of what you hope to address/explore/achieve/investigate by writing the report. You have to include all the issues/problems/questions that you want to address/explore/achieve/investigate in this report.
Findings
This section should contain a systematic presentation of your findings to the purpose of your report. If you used data as part of your supporting information to address the issues that you want to explore, you should describe them in detail (e.g., How the data was collected and by whom), and they may be presented as Tables and/or Figures (diagrams, e.g., graphs, flow charts), each with a unique number (e.g., Table 2, Figure 7) and a caption describing the Table or Figure clearly. The results should also be described in words, referring to any Tables and Figures you include.
Discussion
The information presented in the findings section should be discussed in this section. It is a good idea to refer back to the purposes of your report at this stage. The discussion may include findings from other related literature/studies that support or contradict your findings. For example, if there has been a previous report for the same area but a long time ago or other countries or specified group of people. Your discussion should refer to any features of demographic or epidemiological factors, health service use, environmental conditions that have changed since the previous report. For examples,
“… In terms of gender differences in dating relationships, more males than females reported being victims, both in terms of severe physical violence (12.2.% versus 6.5%) and physical violence (16.2% versus 10.5%). These results represent an unexpected finding, given that other studies did not find statistically significant gender differences for overall victimization or severe physical and emotional victimization [1].”
“… one possible explanation of the reduction in depression levels over time could be contributed to the quality of the human social interaction between the researcher and
the participants in the intervention period [2].”
Conclusions and recommendations
The conclusions and recommendations should follow logically from the discussion. Conclusions can be short. For example, if your report showed that some parents had not brought their children for immunization, your conclusion could be that additional health education campaigns or more outreach immunization sessions should be organized to improve the coverage rate. Your recommendations should be placed in the same order as the conclusions, i.e., for every conclusion, there should be at least one recommendation. In making recommendations, it will strengthen your messages if you can use not only the findings of your own but also refer to supportive information from other studies/sources. The recommendations should take into consideration the local characteristics of the health system, any constraints on introducing new services or working practices, and the feasibility and usefulness of the proposed solutions. For example,
“Overall, these results highlight the need to explore further and clarify the issue of gender in intimate relationships. Because of our current research and other studies show high rates of mutual violence, it is imperative to understand the motives, contexts, and meanings of the reported episodes of violence. More specifically, future research will need to examine the motives for women’s violent aggression, and how these acts impact on their experiences as victims, the context in which they practice violence as primary aggressors, or if they use violence only in self-defense [3,4].”
References
If you used any reports, documents, or any other sources to help you make sense in your report. The reference style should quote the full references in this section, including the year of publication and the name(s) of the author(s). For example,
In the main text, “ …makes women more vulnerable and more emotionally dependent on the relational dimensions of their lives [1,3-5,10].”
In the references:
From the journal:
[1] Tontodonato P. and Crew BK. Dating violence, social learning theory, and gender: A multivariate analysis. Violence and Victims. 1992;7(1):3–14.
[2] McKeown J, Clarke A, Repper J. Life story work in health and social care: systematic literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 2006;55(2):237-247.
From book/chapter:
[3] Hamberger LK, and Holtzworth-Munroe A. Partner violence, in Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies in Crises Intervention. Dattilio F and Freeman A. Eds., pp. 302–322, Guilford Press, New York, NY, USA, 1994.
From the website/online sources:
[4] World Health Organization, World Report on Violence and Health, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland, 2003. Access on 31/03/2008 https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/en/summary_en.pdf?ua
Annexes
The Annexes should contain any additional information to enable assessors to follow your report. For example, a full set of Tables referred to in the main text (Findings section), but not included all in order to keep the report short.
MEDI3105: Hospital and Community Attachment
Essay Report Assignment (10%)
Instructions for Students
Below you will find a list of THEME (Table 1)
You are required to choose ONE theme.
Under each theme, you will find several issues that could be used in the essay. These issues are suggestions to help you in writing your essay report, but you may include other issues if you feel appropriate for the target group/place. For examples,
Title
Issues/elements to be address
Malaria: An Ongoing Threat in Developing Countries
What is Malaria?
Where is Malaria common geographically?
Why is Malaria a serious public health issue?
Who are the most vulnerable?
what are the morbidity and mortality statistics from Malaria infection?
What are the social and economic impacts of malaria?
What are the international and public health program initiatives to control malaria?
What are the latest advances in malaria treatment and prevention?
Obesity and Public Health
1-What is obesity?
2-What are the statistics around obesity worldwide? and how does it compare across nations? adults Vs children obesity?
3-What are the impacts of obesity on individual health?
4-What are the social and economic consequences of obesity?
5-How is obesity considered a public health crisis?
6-What are the proposed strategies to combat obesity? prevention Vs. treatment? individual Vs. public health initiatives?
You have to include your opinion/suggestions/recommendations in the report.
You may include pictures, figures/flow charts/tables in your report to support your findings/opinions. Remember, have to provide the sources of those pictures/figures because of copyright issue.
The format of the report, please refer to the “Guidelines for students to write an essay report”. The report must be written in English, the number of words in the main text (excluded cover page, summary, table of contents, references, and annexes) are in between 2,000-2,200 words, with the page number on each page, fonts size is Time new roman 12, and one-line spacing.
The essay report assignment will account for 10% of the total grade in the course.
All forms of plagiarism, cheating, and unauthorized collusion are regarded seriously by the University and could result in penalties, including failure and possible exclusion from the University.
This assignment is in either pdf or word format and must be received on/before 21st/Nov (week 12) to the course coordinator to Moodle (to-be-confirmed). Late submission will not be accepted.
Table 1. Themes for students on the essay report
Theme
Suggested issues/elements to address on the report
#1. Water pipe smoking
What is water pipe smoking (WPS)?
How common is WPS?
Is WPS a public health problem?
Describe the distribution of WPS over people, places, and time if available.
Might any factors (e.g., cultural) affect people to use of WPS?
What are your opinion and recommendations about people towards WPS?
#2 Impacts of the aging population on healthcare services
What is the definition of aging?
What is the current distribution of the elderly?
Caring for older adults considered a challenge to the healthcare system?
How could we improve the caring services for older adults?
What are factors (e.g., social, cultural) that might contribute to change our caring of the elderly in the future?
What are your opinion and recommendations that could improve healthcare services on older adults?
#3 Communication between doctors and patients
What is “doctor-patient communication (DPC)?
Does DPC consist of different components?
What are the common problems observed in DPC? (provide information/statistics)
How does the improvement of DPC can lead to enhancing patient care?
How does poor DPC affect the quality of care and patients satisfaction?
What are your opinion and recommendations could improve quality of care and patient satisfaction via DPC?
#4 Complementary alternative medicine
What is “Complementary alternative medicine (CAM)?
What are the types of CAM?
What are the practices of CAM?
Any information showing the distribution to use CAM?
How could we integrate CAM and modern medicine into the healthcare system?
What are your opinion and recommendations could improve people’s health by using CAM in the future?
#5 Need for community health
What is “Community Health” (CH)?
Who should responsible for CH?
How could CH improve coverall health in the community?
How does CH help to train better doctors?
How does CH integrate with modern medicine?
What are your opinion and recommendations could improve CH?
#6 Climate change
What is “Climate Change”?
What are the forms of climate change?
Describe the types of climate change and its impacts on this area, e.g., cyclones (provide information/statistics)
Why did climate change consider a severe public health challenge?
What are the implications of climate change in societies, especially on health?
What are your opinion and recommendations to be more prepared for climate change in this area?
#7 Impacts of the COVID-19
What is COVID-19?
What are the common issues people are facing in COVID-19?
What are the statistics in terms of infected/death/recovered cases, mortality rates, etc.? (provide information/statistics)
What are the positive and negative impacts of COVID-19 to the people?
How could educators enhance the awareness of people in the community on public health / epidemiological issues?
What are your opinion and recommendations to us facing this virus in the future?
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