CURTIN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY, SPEECH THERAPY AND SOCIAL WORK HONOURS – EXAMINATION 2019 Scope and Structure of the Honours Project and Thesis The Allied Health honours stream of...

CURTIN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY, SPEECH THERAPY AND SOCIAL WORK HONOURS – EXAMINATION 2019 Scope and Structure of the Honours Project and Thesis The Allied Health honours stream of the Bachelor of Science (Occupational Therapy) and Bachelor of Social Work is an eighteen month embedded program in a four-year degree. The Honours stream consists of two units: Allied Health Honours Proposal (25 credit points) and a yearlong Allied Health Honours Dissertation unit (75 credit points). Honours students conduct an empirical research project under the direction of their supervisor. Virtually all of the students are novice researchers and they are required to balance their project with the remaining units of their course, which is mainly fieldwork in their fourth year. Given this context honours projects are designed to be manageable. Sample sizes and/or depth of analysis are often modest compared to Higher Degree Research projects. Nevertheless, the projects are expected to be of a standard where publication is ultimately achievable. Honours topics are broad ranging but most often match the supervisor and School’s research areas. This year there have been projects from industry partners (for the first time). While many projects will have direct relevance to Occupational Therapy and Social Work practice, others may be more theoretically oriented or of relevance to a specific sub-field. The final submission for the qualification of Honours is the written dissertation. The main content of the research is reported in the form of a journal article or industry report (where appropriate). The Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University has recently adopted this process with all of the honours dissertations. The idea is to try and ensure a concrete output from the honours dissertations, many of which are of a publishable standard. The dissertation will include: • Introduction: This will include background information to the overall dissertation. The introduction should be no longer than two (2) pages in length. The purpose of the introduction is to orientate the reader to any relevant information pertaining to the development of the project and/or the layout of the article/report. The student may include a brief statement in relation to the significance of the research, and a short overview of the structure of the dissertation (including information about the journal chosen). The introduction should not be marked, but used to help “set the scene” of the rest of the report. • Research Report: This will be prepared in a form and style ready for submission to either an appropriate journal (this will include the required referencing style) or industry partner. The word length is 5000 words (regardless of journal/report stipulations- this is to ensure equity across varying projects). • Appendices: Students should include copies of the participant information sheets and consent forms, and the Author Guidelines for the chosen journal. They may provide further details related to methods, eg. Relevant supplementary material, questionnaires, instruments, interview schedules, examples of coding and/or additional data, eg. additional tables, examples from transcripts etc. • Authorship Information: An additional appendix should include contributions of the students to the project. This will do completed according to a template provided to the students. • Note: The Appendices are for background information and to assure the examiners that the students have followed the correct research process and there is no mark awarded. The final mark should be awarded out of 100. Examiners should refer to these guidelines when marking the journal article. Due to the structure of the thesis there may be some level of repetition, but students will have attempted to keep this to a minimum.