OHSE6090Research in Occupational Health and Safety

Course handbook

Description

Introduces research aspects of occupational health and safety. As much of the research in OHS (at least as far as people are concerned) uses epidemiology, this is the focus of the course. Statistics are part of research and are introduced in the course with an emphasis on practical statistics to help in the workplace or help students to understand the literature. The course also covers some other research methods and critical appraisal of the literature.

Availability2017 Course Timetables

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Show an understanding of the nature of epidemiology.

2. Use basic indicators of health in a community.

3. Analyse an occupational health problem using an epidemiological approach

4. Critically review the OH & S research literature.

Content

• a.  Epidemiology: what is it?
• b.  Health Indicators; ratios, proportions and rates; using health indicators
• c.  Research strategies for occupational health and safety interventions; hypotheses; the components of a research study; types of research study; relationship of study types to each other; validity; the exposure variable
• d.  Risk, cause and bias; risk; further estimates of risk; cause; confounding and other biases
• e.  Introduction to statistics; gathering and reporting information; describe and manipulate information; using mean, standard deviation and number; probability and confidence;  comparisons; inferential statistics
• f.  Investigating epidemics; recognising and epidemic; investigating and epidemic; clusters
• g. Qualitative methods
• h. Research ethics
• i.  Critical appraisal

Requisite

Pre-requisite - successful completion of OHSE6010, OHSE6050, LEGL6004 and OHSE6020

Assessment items

In Term Test: Online Test

Written Assignment: Essay/Written Assignment (Critical Appraisal and Study Design) Capstone

Formal Examination: Exam

Contact hours

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