Tool Shelf Audit Evaluation Health Status Assessment Health Needs Assessment Health Impact Assessment Action Research Descriptive Studies Cohort studies Case control studies Intervention Studies Systematic Reviews Official Statistics Secondary Statistical Analysis Measuring Quality of Life Survey Questionnaire Design Interviews Ethnography Observation studies Focus Groups Content Analysis Semiological Analysis Media Analysis Case Study Economic Analysis

Tools are a term that public health use to denote methods or methodologies. Public Health is an interdiscipinary field comprising of epidemiology, statistics, medical anthropology, medical sociology, medical pscyhology, health economics, management studies and medical sciences. Each field brings its own theories, methodologies and epistemology (i.e. the type of knowledge being produced). As a result, public health has a wide range of tools at its disposal. This page acts as a source of information on the different tools that are available. To find out about a particular tool, just click on its name on the tool shelf.

(Please note that the tools are being added one at a time. If a tool you want is not yet available, please drop me a line at dr_cath@hotmail.com).

Toolkit also provides some information on how to conduct research. Given that my background is sociology, the emphasis will be on social research methods. Many public health people incorrectly assume that medical sociological approach is qualitative. Sociology like other sciences uses both induction (i.e. qualitative research such as focus groups, in-depth interivews) and deductive logic (quantitative research like surveys, experiments, secondary statistical analysis). The trick is to ask yourself at the onset of your project do you wish to test a theory or generalise your findings to a wider population (e.g. "80% of women in the UK read women's magazines") or do you want to devise a theory from your observations of how people feel or think about an issue. To read more about the difference between quantitative and qualitative research, click here. For information on how to design a piece of research, click here and you can read about doing a literature review by clicking here.

If you have any questions, please drop me a line at dr_cath@hotmail.com. I will in time put up a message board but until then, please email me.