Faculty of Health Sciences

The Faculty of Health Sciences Masters Program provides students with solid groundwork in conducting health science research. It also establishes a foundation regarding the uptake of knowledge (knowledge transference) to clinical practice.

Full-time or part-time study is available to students. There are four required courses in Year 1.  These courses and their scheduling is normally as follows:

Fall Semester: HLSC 5100: Research Methods
The course will focus on an in-depth examination and comparison of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods designs.  Students will have the opportunity to apply their acquired knowledge of research designs toward development of:  Statement of the Problem, Literature review and Methodology.

Fall Semester: HLSC 5200: Philosophy of Inquiry
In this course, students are exposed to perspectives in philosophy of science.  Students will explore ways in which philosophies underpin methods of inquiry and knowledge development.  The focus will be on assisting students to discover and articulate the philosophies (values, beliefs and assumptions) that inform the development of their individual, emerging research projects.

Spring Semester: HLSC 5300: Advanced Statistics
This course addresses descriptive statistics and statistical inference followed by a comprehensive study of statistical tests appropriate for most types of research questions and data sets.  By the end of the course students will have fluency in univariate and multivariate tests, parametric and nonparametric tests, and the application of SPSS for statistical testing.

Spring Semester: HLSC 5400: Advanced Qualitative Analysis
Major theoretical and philosophical aspects of various qualitative methodologies such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, narrative, ethnography, and grounded theory will be discussed.  Each student will generate a qualitative research proposal.

These courses are usually offered in a 3 hour block once a week.  Statistics also has an additional 2 hour lab.  Students must maintain a minimum grade of 2.7 (B-) in all courses.  For graduation, students must have a minimum cumulative program grade point average of 3.0 (B).

The Western Dean’s agreement allows for equivalent courses at a different institution to be substituted for one or more of the 4 above courses.  Students need to make an application for this to occur, and both the course instructor and the Graduate Coordinator need to agree that the proposed substitution is equivalent.