Week 2
Attention Research Interns! Week 2 has officially started, and we're in the Literature search, topic selection, objectives phase! Let’s kick off the week with a thought from Anthony J. D’Angelo: “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.”
Focus of the week: This week activity is meant to finalize literature searching activity coming up with a good research topic, stated in form of a research objective, covering some research gap. Also it is meant to organize literature for future use.
Here's the plan for your second week of research learning:
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Monday |
· Connect with your fellow interns to start discussing your group assignment. Work on the assignment in collaboration. · Group leader will upload the assignment template to Google Docs, share the link with group members, and complete it together. For guidance on Google Docs, check this video. · Conduct an In-depth literature search using identified strategies. Focus on identifying potential research topics. |
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Tuesday |
· Continue conducting an In-depth literature search using identified strategies. · Prepare an Excel sheet to organize your literature findings and pinpoint those crucial research gaps. Use the Assignment Template (Excel sheet) given in Workshop Session 1 (see Week-1). · Upload as Google sheet for team to be able to collaborate. |
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Wednesday |
· Review reading material on drafting statements of Research Objectives. · Discuss with team and draft clear objectives. · Attend the first live tutorial with the instructor (coordinate timing with HR) to clarify concepts and queries on literature searching |
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Thursday |
· Submit your completed assignment (Excel Sheet with literature, Research Objective) to your mentors in official group by Thursday. Also start making your accounts on the ERC Portal to form
teams and enable proposal development forms. |
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Friday |
· Mentor Meeting: Mentor Meeting and Feedback session on your assignments. Send meeting minutes after every mentor meeting in your respective official group. |
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Saturday |
· Implement any suggestions and improvements provided by your mentors. · Complete the recorded Session-2 on Study Designs and Analysis Options |
Making Accounts on ERC Portal:
· ERC Portal is for collaborative proposal developments, submission and reviews, with automatic documents generation.
· All collaborative work by research team, supervisors and ERC reviewers will be through this Portal. This is not just submission but proposal writing form.
Link to portal:
Interns can make their account as "Researcher". Please nominate one intern leader for this Portal and that leader will make their account as "Researcher lead". Mentors will sign up as "Supervisors". Once team is made, proposal is enabled for collaboration by the leader
We offer support through our IT team. Please send screenshots of your issue on Discussion forum and somebody will forward to the IT team.
Weekend Activities
Mentor Meeting
Coordinate with your group. Reach out to HR person in case of any coordination difficulties with mentor (admin@bmyhealth.com).
Workshop Session-2
“Basics of Health Research” Workshop by BMY Health Canada
Session 2
Study Design Options:
In previous session we discussed how to get research ideas and choosing a topic, which is the starting point. As we got the idea in mind to be explored, the second step would be to decide the methods of exploring this idea. This means choosing a study design, choosing a sample and deciding what measurements to take on that sample.
To
enable you for these decisions and designing your own study, we will teach you
the concepts of study design, sampling, measurements through data collection
and analysis. Go through the slides
before you watch the recording to set your mind onto learning this conceptual
topic.
In the recorded lecture, we’ll take you through basics to introducing some advanced concepts with these learning objectives:
- Learning the major types of study designs including observational VS experimental studies, and descriptive vs. analytical studies.
- Learn how to use cross-sectional, case-control, cohort, or experimental study designs.
- Understand how to solve a community problem starting with descriptive studies and moving on to analytical ones, and how to choose the right design to answer your research question.
- Learn to apply the concepts with our real-world examples.
- Get familiar with the types of measures and analysis in different study designs.
Whether you're exploring frequency or risk factors of a disease, or evaluating a new treatment, your study design determines how credible and meaningful your findings will be. A well-chosen design not only answers your research question accurately, it also protects your study from biases, saves resources, and ensures your study is publishable in reputed journals.
Watch this video and start learning: