Introducing, Designing and Conducting Research for Paramedics

Section 1: Introduction to research

Part One: Welcome to your research journey
1. Historical perspectives and the emergence of research in healthcare
2. The importance of research for paramedicine as a profession
3. Evidence based practice for paramedicine
4. How to use this book

Part Two: Starting at the start
5. How to determine what topic to research?
6. Asking the answerable question and how to know which way to answer it
7. What to do before you start
8. Theoretical and conceptual frameworks
9. Overview of research designs and the hierarchy of evidence
10. Thinking about ethics in research

Section 2: Preparing for the research

Part Three: Finding what has already been done (i.e. Literature reviews / secondary research)
11. Literature reviews process and production software
12. Sourcing the available evidence (primary, secondary and tertiary evidence)
13. Appraising and critiquing the evidence (anecdotal, observational, experimental)
14. Structured reviews including Umbrella reviews, scoping reviews, rapid reviews, and narrative reviews
15. Cochrane reviews and systematic reviews (including meta-analyses and meta-synthesis)

Part Four: Methodological considerations
16. Moral principles and ethical considerations
17. Data collection and storage
18. Reliability and validity in quantitative and qualitative research
19. Sampling (probability sampling/random sampling vs non-probability/non-random sampling)
20. Sample size and power calculation
21. Assessing bias
22. Cross-cultural considerations Culturally inclusive considerations in paramedic research

Section 3: Explaining the what (Quantitative)

Part Five: Quantitative research designs
23. Case reports and case series
24. Cross sectional studies
25. Case control studies
26. Cohort studies and registry studies
27. Randomised Controlled Trials
28. Experimental studies other than RCTs

Part Six: Statistics/quantitative analysis
29. Data collection tools/approaches for quantitative research
30. Type of quantitative data (continuous, categorical, distributions, skewness)
31. Descriptive statistics, missing data, and testing assumptions
32. Statistical significance, P values, effect sizes and confidence intervals
33. Inferential statistics: t-tests, regression analysis and adjustments (Mediation versus Moderation)
34. Survival analysis

Section 4: Explaining the why (Qualitative)

Part Seven: Qualitative research designs
35. Phenomenology
36. Action Research
37. Case Study
38. Ethnography
39. Grounded Theory

Part Eight: Qualitative analysis
40. Data collection approaches for qualitative research
41. Data collection in qualitative research
42. Types of qualitative data (quote, observations)
43. Developing themes

Section 5: Other ways to answer the question

Part Nine: Combining research methods and other designs
44. Mixed methodology design
45. The Delphi Technique
46. The Nominal Group Technique
47. Cost benefit/cost effectiveness research

Section 6: Sharing new knowledge

Part Ten: Disseminating and implementing research
48. Writing the paper (including use of tables/figures etc)
49. The implementation (translation) process
50. Presenting and getting your research published
51. Research dissemination and bibliometrics
52. Grant writing/building teams/collaboration

Part Eleven: The Future of Paramedicine research, Summary and Conclusion
53. Setting up the Future of Paramedicine
54. Summary, recommendations and conclusions