romantic title. Do not give a “double title” (eg: “Smoking in the Blacktown community, or why kids die young”, as is popular in magazine articles). You will probably need to rewrite the title as the study progresses. This is a healthy sign, however, as it shows you have reshaped your basic idea as you develop the study design.
b. Table of contents: This should assist the reader to find the main sections of the Protocol, but should not be detailed down to the level of sub-sections. Lists of tables or figures, and a glossary is not essential.
c. Introduction: This should introduce the importance of the disease or health state and give reasons for the risk factors or behaviour modifiers selected for study, supported with ample references (use this opportunity to draw on the journal reviews for referencing purposes). The introduction should at least have:
— Motivation for the study (e.g. local relevance of the health state, severity or extent of disease). Personal motivations are not relevant (eg: I, myself, have asthma). — Study objectives (what the study aims to achieve). Potential products (e.g. reports, journal publications) should be outlined. — Ethical constraints, briefly described where necessary, and relating to the need to deal with humans in a respectful and empathetic way when collecting data.
d. Journal reviews: The importance of this section has already been discussed. Make sure you study three journal articles in depth and provide review of each. Each review should include a summary, assessment, and statement of relevance to your own study. The assessment component should discuss any weaknesses or problems detected in the paper (does each paper address all six interrogative questions, who, what, where, when, why, and how? Would a few diagrams have helped? Does it seem logical and easy to understand?). It would be pedantic to use “who, what, where, etc. as sub-headings so try to blend these areas into a cohesive answer. Include the journal abstracts of the papers used in an appendix of your Protocol to assist the marker. Entire copies of the paper are not necessary.
e. Study design: This is probably the most neglected part of any protocol, but it is very important. It gives, in concise language, an overview of how the study will be done, without going into detailed method. Under this section some reference should be made to the population at risk, the sampling frame, and the sample and sampling technique to be used.
f. Materials and methods: In epidemiological studies, ‘materials’ includes data, and the measuring instrument (eg: questionnaire) used to obtain the data. The section should refer to your questionnaire which should be pre-sented in its entirety in another appendix at the end of the report, as it will be assessed. You could also include the first version of your questionnaire (before pilot testing), and comment on why some questions were modified. You might also want to add information motivating why each question was included. Criteria for interpreting the answers to each question to guide the interviewer in the field should be given as the criteria contribute substantially to the “standardisation” of the questionnaire (ie.: the process by which it could be applied to the same population group by different interviewers at different times, and still yield the same results). Questionnaire design is challenging, but this area will be well covered in lectures, with practical examples of good and bad questions and approaches.
The questionnaire presented in the Protocol should essentially be usable, although there is not an expectation that it will have the same artistic and layout quality as a final questionnaire. Please note that students are not required to go out and do an actual survey using the questionnaire; in fact this would be in contradiction with University Ethics Committee requirements.
The intended analytical methods which would be used to collect and analyse the data should be discussed down to details of the statistical tests and computer applications which would be used. It should be noted that a grey boundary exists between design and method but, in general, ‘design’ is more concerned with the overa I plan, sample size needed, etc., whereas ‘method’ tends to cover detail explaining how the survey would be carried out (locations where interviewers would stand, how a random sample would be drawn, etc.).
g. Presentation: In the Protocol you should mention how you would want to show your results, if the study was carried out. Results can be shown in different ways, although tables and different types of graphs are the main methods. In this regard one of the Unit Exercises will deal with the use and conventions (rules) for setting out tables, graphs, maps, etc..
h. Products: This would include a discussion of the number of papers or presentations which might arise from the study, what their titles might be, and which journals or venues (such as conferences) you might target for pre-
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