Postgraduate Course: Quantitative Information for Service Improvement (ISSH11006)
Course Outline
| School | School of Health in Social Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Interdisciplinary Social Sciences in Health |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | Engagement in ongoing service improvement is an increasingly important part of public sector staff responsibilities. In particular, health and social care policy in Scotland and England is predicated on a workforce engaged and skilled in service improvement. Effective service improvement requires, inter alia, quantitative information skills to operationalise the change needed, to continuously monitor and guide the change process and to use clear forms of feed-back to enable broad involvement and engagement in the change process. A dedicated course, which teaches quantitative data skills in the specific context of service improvement is highly relevant in this field. Due to the short timeframe of change projects, the ideal data by which to guide change may not be available. For example, routinely collected data for a variety of purposes have to be used, and it is important that decisions about change are made on the basis of a sound appreciation of what the data can and cannot say. Use of quantitative data for service improvement requires additional skills which extend beyond an understanding and appreciation of the robustness of data and its interpretation however. It also requires skills and a critical understanding of how to apply this appreciation in practice in the management of change processes. Data is an important focus for negotiating such processes and securing the engagement of a range of constituencies. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2012/13 Flexible, Available to all students (SV1)
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Learn enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| No Classes have been defined for this Course |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
¿ Critical understanding of ways in which quantitative
information is used in
¿ Research
¿ Performance management and measurement for accountability
¿ Continuous quality improvement and redesign of service
processes
¿ Critical appraisal of the robustness of routinely collected
and for purpose generated data sets used in service
improvement.
¿ Critical appreciation of how to apply an understanding of
quantitative data in dialogues about service change.
Analytical skills
¿ Understanding variation for service improvement purposes
¿ Supply, demand and flow
¿ Random and systematic errors of design and measurement;
common and special causes of variation
¿ The use of indicators for monitoring processes
¿ Statistical concepts relevant to analysing, interpreting and
presenting quantitative data for service improvement
¿ Descriptive statistics, including measures of central
tendency, dispersion, shape and outliers
¿ Exploratory data analysis
¿ Statistical sampling and population inference
¿ Measures of association
¿ Statistical process control
¿ Practical skills
¿ Accessing secondary datasets and generating simple primary
datasets
¿ Presentation of quantitative information about changes in a
service process
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Assessment Information
The assessment will comprise two elements including practical exercises which require data analysis and interpretation, and a written assignment which may take the form of a short essay, critique of a research paper or analysis of a report of
approximately 1500 $ú 2000 words.
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Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Ailsa Cook
Tel: (0131 6)50 3881
Email: Ailsa.Cook@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lorna Sheal
Tel: (0131 6)50 3890
Email: L.Sheal@ed.ac.uk |
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