Topic: Final Integrated Research Portfolio
IS PHARMACOTHERAPY BETTER THAN PSYCHOTHERAPY AT HELPING CLIENTS AGED 65 YEARS DECREASE DEPRESSION?
Based upon feedback obtained through your special interest group and the instructor throughout the semester, students are expected to submit a final and integrated portfolio of all assignments described in the Research Portfolio section. The integrated portfolio should contain updated versions of portfolio pieces 1, 2, 3 and 4, incorporating responses to feedback received during the semester and any further thoughts you have developed over the course of the semester. As a collection, all pieces should fit together into a coherent picture of how you would imagine conducting a study to address the selected research question. The final document should contain two additional sections, an overview section that quickly summarizes the overall research approach, and a second section titled Strengths and Limitations that summarizes the strengths and limitations of the research approach you describe. It may be constructive to think about the strengths and limitations of your approach as compared to those of other members of your special interest group. Remember that there isn’t one “right” approach. All approaches have different kinds of strengths and limitations. Assignment 1. Overall Research Approach This section should be written in a format that is similar to what you might read in the abstract to a journal article. Because you have been thinking about how a research question might be answered and do not have any data collected, you are not asked to present results and conclusions. The goal of this section should be to summarize in a concise form how the different portfolio pieces contribute to learning something about the research question you have proposed. This section should tell the story of how the question would be addressed. Looking at how this is done in journal article abstracts may be quite helpful in thinking about how this can occur. There is no specific length requirement for this section, but a concise picture of how the portfolio pieces fit together to help answer the question should require about 500 words. It should be placed at the front of the entire portfolio. 2. Updated Portfolio Pieces Based on feedback you have received from the course instructor and other student colleagues, and/or your own additional thoughts, update portfolio parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 and turn in clean copies of those assignments all in one document. 3. Strengths and Limitations .Every research effort, whether conducted primarily for the purpose of research or in the service of a program evaluation or simply program improvement, involves decisions that are designed to help one to learn something meaningful about an issue of interest. Decisions often come with tradeoffs. Please discuss at least one strength and one limitation with regard to sampling, measurement, or design in your approach to addressing the research question you have selected. Be sure to talk about something that goes beyond what was written in Portfolio Part 4. As part of doing this, you might want to discuss what alternative choice or choices you might have made and how this would have affected the strengths/limitations of your approach. Discussing additional strengths/limitations of which you are aware is welcomed. This section should require about 500 words, although this is not a specific requirement. This section should be placed at the end of the portfolio, before the source pages.
