HEAL 314 - Health Promotion Field Research Practicum

(3 hours) Prerequisites: HEAL 100, MATH 105 or higher, and ENG 112. Student must be a Health Promotion major or minor with a minimum of a 3.0 overall GPA and a 3.0 GPA in Health Promotion classes. Permission from the instructor is required to join this seminar. This course allows the student the opportunity to learn basic principles, the process, and the application of health science research to address community health issues while participating in faculty-student research. This experiential opportunity will combine practical application with methods instruction in a small, supervised setting. Emphasis is on learning the basic elements of conducting research, with specific emphasis on mixed-methods research in the social sciences. Exposure to research methods common in the humanities and hard sciences will also be included. Through classroom practice and/or real world opportunity, students will learn about the importance of dissemination of research findings. Research results in health promotion shared through accepted & respected channels within the field provide important guidance for programming efforts; the course will emphasize practical utility of research questions, data analysis, and results interpretation. A major focus will be on how professionals share research results in presentation and peer-reviewed publication form, and students will gain become acquainted with the generation, review, and critique of published research.