Research Volunteers
Volunteering at the CHPRC
The CHPRC brings together staff and students interested in being involved in applied public health and health promotion research and training. Students have been engaged in all previous research projects. Staff at the CHPRC are committed to providing opportunities for students to develop and enhance their health promotion and research skills.
Volunteers are provided with practical tasks ranging from scribing for focus groups, administering questionnaires, conducting literature searches and assisting with report writing, to general administrative duties. Students who demonstrate competence with such tasks are given greater responsibility within the Centre. Should casual work become available in the CHPRC, volunteers are more likely to be offered these contracts before other applicants because of their experience working with our research team.
What are the benefits of volunteering at the CHPRC?
- Students who volunteer are likely to be more successful at securing a career in Health Promotion because of the additional and applied skills they develop at the CHPRC. They can include their Health Promotion research experience to address selection criteria for job applications;
- Volunteer work is well recognised by potential employers as demonstrating a commitment by the individual to enhancing their skills and experience in health promotion;
- The multidisciplinary research skills gained through volunteer work provide greater flexibility and range of work in many areas of health promotion and public health;
- Students are given the opportunity to develop competencies based upon their areas of researchinterest, e.g. mental health, drug use prevention or working with young children;
- Volunteer experience complements academic learning at Edith Cowan University by providing practical experience in applying concepts and theories studied;
- Students have the opportunity to work on state and nationally funded Health Promotion projects;
- Casual paid employment opportunities may be offered to students who demonstrate competence in research tasks.
Research Competency Program
In 2004, CHPRC established an accreditation program to formally acknowledge the skills that volunteers develop whilst working in the Centre. The program provides opportunities for students and recent graduates to become involved in a range of practical Health Promotion skills that contribute to the development of five levels of competence as described below. As a student demonstrates his/her research ability in specific tasks and completes the required hours of work, he/she will receive a certificate to acknowledge and describe the development of these competencies and graduate to the next level of the program.
Every volunteer who works within the CHPRC begins by completing the tasks identified in level one. These tasks are most frequently required by Project Coordinators and are essential for the implementation of rigorous research. Some competencies are repeated in different levels of the program to reflect the importance of these research skills.
The following provides a summary of the five research competence levels of the CHPRC and the number of hours required to achieve them.
Level One (15 hours)
Level One competencies consist of:
- Attendance at formal research skills training
- Article retrieval and review
- Labeling and packing questionnaires
- Processing respondent mail and follow-up questionnaires
- Maintaining databases
- General project duties
Level Two (30 hours)
Level Two competencies consist of:
- Quantitative or qualitative data entry
- Questionnaire administration
- Conducting telephone or intercept interviews
- General project duties
- Labeling and packing questionnaires
- Using EndNote
Level Three (30 hours)
Level Three competencies consist of:
- Questionnaire administration
- Scribing and transcribing focus groups
- Conducting observational data collection
- Team leadership
- Literature searches and annotated bibliographies
- Communicating with health and education organisations involved in our research
- Entering and cleaning data
Level Four (40 hours)
Level Four competencies consist of:
- Literature review
- Instrument and materials development
- Group facilitation e.g. focus groups
- Liaison with community members and health professionals
- Univariate data analyses using SPSS
- Interpreting qualitative data
- Coordinating questionnaire administrations
Level Five (50 hours)
Level Five competencies consist of:
- Assisting with report, paper and grant writing
- Facilitating focus groups
- Multi-variate data analysis using SPSS
- Writing summary reports from data
- Database management
- Training research staff
Insurance and Confidentiality
The CHPRC is committed to ensuring all volunteers have a safe and successful work experience. To ensure this is achieved, the CHPRC require all new volunteers to:
- Sign a confidentiality agreement – that you will uphold the confidentiality of data collected
- Complete ECU online induction – covering Occupational Safety and Health and ECU policies procedures
- Hold a current Working with Children Check notice
If you are interested in volunteering at the CHPRC, please contact us by email: CHPRC@ecu.edu.au or by phone: (08) 9370 6980.
