Overview and Course Objectives
This course is designed to lay the foundations of good theoretical and empirical research from an interdisciplinary perspective with a focus on Disaster Management and Health Care Management. Students become familiar with a variety of approaches to theory extension and development, research design and analyses, and are helped to develop their own research projects/dissertations and produce quality research papers. The students will be required to write a research paper at the end of the course and submit it to an international research conference as identified by the instructor. The Course will also provide an overview of Social Sciences and Disaster Management Research in Islamic Perspectives. The course will start with an introduction to the principles and methods of research: selecting a workable topic, developing theoretical framework, choosing the appropriate design, securing the respondents, making a test investigation, sampling, collecting data, types and errors of collected data, tabulating and analysing the data using statistical tools and software, interpreting the finding, stating the conclusion, drafting a research paper and finally submitting it to an international conference for possible consideration.
Required Course Materials and Readings
The course requires extensive reading on some topics (see Course Schedule section). The readings will be made available to students in advance of the classes electronically. Class meetings will involve group discussions of the assigned readings, punctuated with lectures and/or presentations. Each student will be responsible for summarizing and leading discussion on one or more assigned readings in class.
Indented Learning Outcomes
The specific course objectives are to help students develop: