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Need help on epq please

For my EPQ my title is "evaluating the effectiveness different treatments on Parkinson's disease" and really need help as i need to finish in a month or so.
Im struggling with how I am going to structure my essay and the research to use..etc...presentation.
Please can someone help me . I really want to get a B or A in it.

Thanks so much,

Chandan Singh
Sorry you've not had any responses about this. :frown: Are you sure you've posted in the right place? :smile: Here's a link to our subject forum which should help get you more responses if you post there. :redface:
Reply 2
Hey I did my EPQ last year, it was about depression and alternative medicine so sort of similar in the medicine theme i guess!

My first piece of advice would maybe be to see if you could specify your title even further, I know it may seem like your current question is pretty specific, and it is, but I think you may find that there are multiple treatments for Parkinson's and different types for different symptoms. You may also find it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of them because surely they'll all be pretty effective since they're approved for treatment of Parkinson's (as in a non-effective drug wont be approved) so you'll have to specify the criteria you will be assessing effectiveness against, and this may come into your title. Maybe you could consider looking into one specific treatment (perhaps a controversial one?) and the history, development, pros, cons, costs and personal opinions of that treatment to conclude whether, in your opinion, it is an effective drug? Alternatively, you could specify in your introduction, for example, a few specific treatments (maybe 4/5) and compare them against each other and give your opinion on which you think is best.

In terms of structuring your work my recommendation would be to write out specific tasks you need to accomplish. For example, you could have 'research' 'planning' 'writing' and 'presentation' as your 4 main tasks, then subdivide those into more tasks. To do this you'd need to specify exactly what you want to discuss in your essay, (see para above) and based on that write out exactly what things you'll be researching, this will save you a lot of time! So, an example could be for 'research', your sub tasks are, research about: what Parkinson's is (for introduction), a criteria to measure effectiveness, main treatments, professional opinions, patient opinions. Then for each these, you divide further, for example, for 'main treatments' you could sub-divide into treatments 1,2,3... etc and look into: history/discovery, mechanism of action, resultant effect on patient, side/effects, effects on patient socially (these will all depend on the criteria you are measuring effectiveness against and also how much detail you want to go into). You'll find that these divisions and sub-divisions will hopefully form the headings of each paragraph / section in your essay and help with structure, though you will definitely need to edit it of course.
Your presentation will be super easy to do once you've written your essay because you'll know everything about your question so I wouldn't worry too much about that yet. If you can get access to a mark scheme (I think they're available online?) that would really help you there in terms of knowing exactly what you need to include.

The main thing to remember is that a lot of your marks come from your 'journey' how you get from the drawing board to the final product, that's why things like planning, managing tasks (see para 2) and reflecting on what you've done / what you'll do next is so important. Make sure you keep a thorough log of your work, it'll come in handy when evaluating your process and hopefully will hitch you some marks too.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need any more advice or if you have any questions :smile:.
(edited 6 years ago)
[QUOTE="Salyhaha;75515174"]Hey I did my EPQ last year, it was about depression and alternative medicine so sort of similar in the medicine theme i guess!

My first piece of advice would maybe be to see if you could specify your title even further, I know it may seem like your current question is pretty specific, and it is, but I think you may find that there are multiple treatments for Parkinson's and different types for different symptoms. You may also find it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of them because surely they'll all be pretty effective since they're approved for treatment of Parkinson's (as in a non-effective drug wont be approved) so you'll have to specify the criteria you will be assessing effectiveness against, and this may come into your title. Maybe you could consider looking into one specific treatment (perhaps a controversial one?) and the history, development, pros, cons, costs and personal opinions of that treatment to conclude whether, in your opinion, it is an effective drug? Alternatively, you could specify in your introduction, for example, a few specific treatments (maybe 4/5) and compare them against each other and give your opinion on which you think is best.

In terms of structuring your work my recommendation would be to write out specific tasks you need to accomplish. For example, you could have 'research' 'planning' 'writing' and 'presentation' as your 4 main tasks, then subdivide those into more tasks. To do this you'd need to specify exactly what you want to discuss in your essay, (see para above) and based on that write out exactly what things you'll be researching, this will save you a lot of time! So, an example could be for 'research', your sub tasks are, research about: what Parkinson's is (for introduction), a criteria to measure effectiveness, main treatments, professional opinions, patient opinions. Then for each these, you divide further, for example, for 'main treatments' you could sub-divide into treatments 1,2,3... etc and look into: history/discovery, mechanism of action, resultant effect on patient, side/effects, effects on patient socially (these will all depend on the criteria you are measuring effectiveness against and also how much detail you want to go into). You'll find that these divisions and sub-divisions will hopefully form the headings of each paragraph / section in your essay and help with structure, though you will definitely need to edit it of course.
Your presentation will be super easy to do once you've written your essay because you'll know everything about your question so I wouldn't worry too much about that yet. If you can get access to a mark scheme (I think they're available online?) that would really help you there in terms of knowing exactly what you need to include.

The main thing to remember is that a lot of your marks come from your 'journey' how you get from the drawing board to the final product, that's why things like planning, managing tasks (see para 2) and reflecting on what you've done / what you'll do next is so important. Make sure you keep a thorough log of your work, it'll come in handy when evaluating your process and hopefully will hitch you some marks too.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need any more advice or if you have any questions.:smile:[/QUOTE

Hello!
This has really helped me.Thanks!! I am going to plan it in a similar way as you mentioned.However, focus on the treatment Levodopa as it is pretty much the only treatment that is used and others are used with that treatment - such as therapy and brain stimulation. It's also the most effective. However, leads to problems so I can talk about that in effectiveness. I am then ing to look at alternative treatments such as medical cannabis and more natural alternatives!! Thanks again, this really helped! I might also get peoples results such as clinical trials too.

the only problem is that the local hospital will not give me consent to interview Parkinsons disease patients and doctors. This is a real shame as I wanted to get primary research - however its too late now.

I am also really confused with the footnote. I've been putting numbers at the end of sentences that i get from articles and websites - E.g. Levodopa a type of amino ac that has medical uses[1]. I have not been using small numbers but big numbers as I am confused. My teacher has not told me how to do this. I then put the website an date accessed at the bottom of the page. However, sometimes I write about an idea from a article or book but its written differently a bit. So I don't know if it needs a number. I just don't know if it would look weird if sometimes every sentence has a number 1m or 2 on it for a while - if that will affect my grade.
I just really want to get an Aor A* in this qualification as it could lowe my university offers :smile:
Original post by Salyhaha
Hey I did my EPQ last year, it was about depression and alternative medicine so sort of similar in the medicine theme i guess!

My first piece of advice would maybe be to see if you could specify your title even further, I know it may seem like your current question is pretty specific, and it is, but I think you may find that there are multiple treatments for Parkinson's and different types for different symptoms. You may also find it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of them because surely they'll all be pretty effective since they're approved for treatment of Parkinson's (as in a non-effective drug wont be approved) so you'll have to specify the criteria you will be assessing effectiveness against, and this may come into your title. Maybe you could consider looking into one specific treatment (perhaps a controversial one?) and the history, development, pros, cons, costs and personal opinions of that treatment to conclude whether, in your opinion, it is an effective drug? Alternatively, you could specify in your introduction, for example, a few specific treatments (maybe 4/5) and compare them against each other and give your opinion on which you think is best.



Hello!
This has really helped me.Thanks!! I am going to plan it in a similar way as you mentioned.However, focus on the treatment Levodopa as it is pretty much the only treatment that is used and others are used with that treatment - such as therapy and brain stimulation. It's also the most effective. However, leads to problems so I can talk about that in effectiveness. I am then ing to look at alternative treatments such as medical cannabis and more natural alternatives!! Thanks again, this really helped! I might also get peoples results such as clinical trials too.

the only problem is that the local hospital will not give me consent to interview Parkinsons disease patients and doctors. This is a real shame as I wanted to get primary research - however its too late now.

I am also really confused with the footnote. I've been putting numbers at the end of sentences that i get from articles and websites - E.g. Levodopa a type of amino ac that has medical uses[1]. I have not been using small numbers but big numbers as I am confused. My teacher has not told me how to do this. I then put the website an date accessed at the bottom of the page. However, sometimes I write about an idea from a article or book but its written differently a bit. So I don't know if it needs a number. I just don't know if it would look weird if sometimes every sentence has a number 1m or 2 on it for a while - if that will affect my grade.
I just really want to get an Aor A* in this qualification as it could lowe my university offers :smile:
Reply 5
Hey sorry for such a late reply! That sounds really good! Sorry to hear you can't do the primary research you wanted but I wouldn't worry, it's not necessary at all and can often cause more problems than it's worth. About footnotes, the way you're using them sounds right except you have to use superscript numbers instead and yeah everything else sounds fine, the number correlates to a number in the footer of the page which details the author, publication, dates etc etc. If you're using Microsoft word they have a really good footnotes referencing system I would definitely recommend making use of, it'll save you some time! I personally like the Harvard referencing system better so I used that for my EPQ but you're fine to use whatever you like as long as you do it well and consistently. Also yeah I completely understand your concerns about having references everywhere that was one of mine too but it's okay as long as you are putting numbers in places they are /supposed/ to go, so if you have 3 sentences in a row all quoting the same source you don't need a number at the end of each one, put it at the end of the whole paragraph or phrase you're quoting. Also when writing try to split up quoted text with your own writing and the structure will not only help the essay flow better, but it'll also make the footnotes seem less condensed and messy. If you are paraphrasing but the information is not your own, you still must credit the original author. You don't however have to reference things that are common knowledge or are not specific to one source, for example "Parkinson's is a disease that affects the nervous system" would not need to be referenced but "Parkinson's is a disease that affects 1/20 people under the age of 40" would need to be referenced. Again since I used the Harvard referencing system I'm not sure if there are any differences with footnotes so I would recommend reading up on it online (I know, you probably have already by now lol)
Again main thing that will get you marks is your log book, try and keep a really good record of all the decisions you've made in the process, the obstacles, how you overcame them, what your next target was, a record of all of that will pick you up a lot of marks! All the best :smile:
Reply 6
Original post by chandan2000
For my EPQ my title is "evaluating the effectiveness different treatments on Parkinson's disease" and really need help as i need to finish in a month or so.
Im struggling with how I am going to structure my essay and the research to use..etc...presentation.
Please can someone help me . I really want to get a B or A in it.

Thanks so much,

Chandan Singh


Look at this link: it's an A* level response (hope it helps somewhat)
https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Project-Qualification/Level-3/2010/Teaching-and-learning-materials/Exemplar-work-Medical-Consent-feb.pdf
It's detailed and it really helped me get through my project, another obvious thing is: don't panic. I'll also attach a few other documents that might help too.
Thanks for this

Original post by salyhaha
hey i did my epq last year, it was about depression and alternative medicine so sort of similar in the medicine theme i guess!

My first piece of advice would maybe be to see if you could specify your title even further, i know it may seem like your current question is pretty specific, and it is, but i think you may find that there are multiple treatments for parkinson's and different types for different symptoms. You may also find it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of them because surely they'll all be pretty effective since they're approved for treatment of parkinson's (as in a non-effective drug wont be approved) so you'll have to specify the criteria you will be assessing effectiveness against, and this may come into your title. Maybe you could consider looking into one specific treatment (perhaps a controversial one?) and the history, development, pros, cons, costs and personal opinions of that treatment to conclude whether, in your opinion, it is an effective drug? Alternatively, you could specify in your introduction, for example, a few specific treatments (maybe 4/5) and compare them against each other and give your opinion on which you think is best.

In terms of structuring your work my recommendation would be to write out specific tasks you need to accomplish. For example, you could have 'research' 'planning' 'writing' and 'presentation' as your 4 main tasks, then subdivide those into more tasks. To do this you'd need to specify exactly what you want to discuss in your essay, (see para above) and based on that write out exactly what things you'll be researching, this will save you a lot of time! So, an example could be for 'research', your sub tasks are, research about: What parkinson's is (for introduction), a criteria to measure effectiveness, main treatments, professional opinions, patient opinions. Then for each these, you divide further, for example, for 'main treatments' you could sub-divide into treatments 1,2,3... Etc and look into: History/discovery, mechanism of action, resultant effect on patient, side/effects, effects on patient socially (these will all depend on the criteria you are measuring effectiveness against and also how much detail you want to go into). You'll find that these divisions and sub-divisions will hopefully form the headings of each paragraph / section in your essay and help with structure, though you will definitely need to edit it of course.
Your presentation will be super easy to do once you've written your essay because you'll know everything about your question so i wouldn't worry too much about that yet. If you can get access to a mark scheme (i think they're available online?) that would really help you there in terms of knowing exactly what you need to include.

The main thing to remember is that a lot of your marks come from your 'journey' how you get from the drawing board to the final product, that's why things like planning, managing tasks (see para 2) and reflecting on what you've done / what you'll do next is so important. Make sure you keep a thorough log of your work, it'll come in handy when evaluating your process and hopefully will hitch you some marks too.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you need any more advice or if you have any questions :smile:.
Hey if you don’t mind me asking how did this turn out in the end as I’m just starting mine on the same topic and I’m really struggling to narrow down what I want to talk about.

Thanks

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