Instructions for creating the basic narrative used to describe and conduct your Clinical/Community study. Please refer to the Research Guide at www.grmerc.net/research/resources/guide.html for detailed information about these topics.

Title
Descriptive title of the research project

Research Question
What question are you hoping to answer by conducting this line of research?

Significance
Using the literature, establish any previous work that is related to your research question. Also, use the literature to ask the really important question of, "Who cares, so what?"

Design
What statistical design will be used to address your research question? Examples include experimental and quasi-experimental designs such as one group-posttest only or randomized clinical trial or case control cohort.

Methods & Procedures
Methods are techniques in which data are collected and include such things as retrospective chart review, secondary data abstraction, survey, focus group, and interviewing. Procedures are what subjects will be exposed to as part of your study. If your study involves a treatment or intervention, that should be described here.

Subjects
You must identify your unit of analysis, in most cases this will be individuals but could include a classroom, a school, a clinic, a neighborhood, or a hospital unit. Special attention to who is being studied is of great importance both ethically and empirically. This includes having a well thought out plan for Recruitment (includes informed consent), Selection Criteria (Inclusion/Exclusion), Sampling strategy/design (how will individuals or charts be selected), and how you will maintain Data privacy and protection.

Analyses
The analytic plan is more than the statistical techniques to be used but also includes the Hypotheses, Limitations of the Analytic Approach or Design, and Sample size determination/power estimate.

Results
Specify measurements critical to the study objective or hypothesis. Specify associations or differences between or among groups under comparison using p values or preferably, confidence intervals. Note total number of subjects or participants, number meeting inclusion criteria who were excluded, and number enrolled who were lost to follow-up. Present objectively, comments or observations interpreting analyses are for the next section.

Conclusions/Implications
Conclusions should be succinctly stated and firmly supported by the data presented. Note important limitations. Also discuss implications for the health field