Identify a topic in the healthcare field that interests you (this can be broad at this point, like ″Medicare,″ ″mental disorders,″ ″elderly care,″ etc.) Step 2: Find 4 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2007 and 2018 that are closely related to your topic. It will help you with the rest of the assignment if these studies are also based on surveys- play with different key words in the journal databases to focus on these types of studies (If you are having trouble with this, you can get one-on-one help from a UCF Librarian- click here for info). Briefly summarize (in your own words) what these articles tell you about your topic in a few paragraphs (I don′t need every detail of the papers. Just convey what is relevant). Make sure they are cited in APA format on the References page at the end of your paper. Step 3: Based on what you learned from the articles above and what you still want to know about your topic, brainstorm 3-4 potential specific research questions (these are not the same as survey questions) about your topic- include each of your brainstorms in the paper (i.e. if you pick elderly care, one potential question could be, ″Does regular family visitation decrease risk of depression in elderly individuals aged 70-90 who are living in long-term care facilities?″ but not something too vague or subjective, like ″Is elderly care in Florida good or bad?″). Remember, study questions should be specific, measurable, and realistic. Step 4: Pick one of your brainstormed questions that would be best suited for a survey/questionnaire methodology. If your question requires you to collect biomedical data or use secondary data, or in any other way does not depend on participant attitudes/behaviors, it is not suited for a survey- your book has a lot of good information about this. For example, a question like ″Does daily intake of a fish oil supplement increase HDL levels in post-menopausal women?″ would not be appropriate. To answer this type of question, you would need to measure HDL levels, which obviously cannot be done as a survey. Step 5: Develop a 5-10 question survey that could be a part of a study that addresses the research question. To make this easier, we are going to standardize the question responses to fit a Likert scale.
