RESEARCH METHODS & APPLICATIONS

Successful public health studies, policies, and interventions rely on evidence to guide their design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Because public health is not a simple, reactive, “take the pill three times a day” solution, but a purposeful approach to preventing disease and promoting health, the tools of scientific inquiry to document, measure, evaluate, and understand all the consequences of health interventions are essential. Learning to identify, gather, and interpret evidence is therefore crucial for public health practitioners. The Research Methods & Applications studio provides an introduction to scientific inquiry and evidence and their relationships to public policy. Using an integrated approach spanning multiple disciplines, students will be provided with a basic introduction to quantitative and qualitative measurement and data collection, tenets of epidemiologic study design, statistical inference and data analysis techniques, and the tools of science. Views on the differences between scientific and other types of inquiry and knowledge, classical models of how science and evidence can inform policy and programs, and sources of tension at the science- policy interface will be explored and discussed. The methods introduced in this course will provide a toolkit with which to help measure and estimate the relationships between the smaller pieces that comprise the complex and dynamic web of systems in public health.