Word limit: 2,500 (+/- 10%)
Weighting: 45%
Assignment overview
For this proposal, you will prepare a protocol for the evaluation of a digital tool. It is recommended that you use the tool you proposed in Assignment 2: Presentation, but this is not compulsory.
A protocol is a structured document and will need to include specific sections. At a minimum, your protocol should include the following sections:
Introduction and rationale: Description of the health area (e.g. definitions, prevalence)
Objective: What is the aim of your evaluation?
Study design: What design will you employ for the evaluation? Note that this does not have to be an experimental design but should be appropriate for your context, intervention and population. It is important to explain why this design was chosen.
Population and inclusion criteria: Who are the participants in the evaluation and who will be excluded?
Recruitment methods
Intervention: Description of the intervention you are evaluating.
Measures: What will be measured, and how and when? You may wish to include a study flow diagram to illustrate this.
Analysis: Proposed analysis, you will not be expected to provide specific detail of statistical analyses here but are expected to identify the overall approach for the analysis of the proposed measures.
References
Please note, this list is just a guide and there may be other elements relevant to your proposed evaluation. It is encouraged to review the SPIRIT checklist (link below) when considered what information should be included.
Your report will need to be:
free of grammatical and typographical errors
referenced using a consistent, academic style (including in-text citations and a list of complete references at the end of the report).
Please note: The reference list is not included in the word count.
Supporting resources
It is recommended that you look at the SPIRIT checklist, which you can download by visiting: Publications & downloadsLinks to an external site. (SPIRIT, 2023).
It is commonplace to publish protocols in journals (e.g. Trials, JMIR Research Protocols) or registries (e.g. ANZCTR). You will be able to find many published examples of evaluation protocols as examples for this assignment, the following are examples from case studies used in this course:
Text message-based diabetes self-management support (SMS4BG): study protocol for a randomised controlled trialLinks to an external site. (Dobson et al., 2016)
A co-designed, culturally-tailored mHealth tool to support healthy lifestyles in Māori and Pasifika communities in New Zealand: protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trialLinks to an external site. (Verbiest et al., 2018)
Trial reviewLinks to an external site. (ANZCTR, 2023)
SPIRIT2013 Statement: Defining standard protocol items for clinical trialsLinks to an external site. (EQUATOR Network, 2023)
You may also consider the following resources.
This assignment draws on the content presented in Modules 4–6.
