PHARMACY HONOURS PROJECT GUIDELINES REVISION DATE OCT.

2018

School of Pharmacy

Guidance for Bachelor of Pharmacy Honours Projects

Contents

1. OBJECTIVES OF THE HONOURS PROJECT 2

2. GENERAL GUIDELINES 2
3. PAYING FOR YOUR PROJECT 2
4. APPROACH TO THE PROJECT 1
4.1. Role of The Supervisor 3
4.2. Ethical Issues 3
4.3. Presentations During the Year 3
5. WRITING UP THE PROJECT 4
5.1. Recommended Project Report Format 4
5.2. Title 4
5.3. Acknowledgments 4
5.4. Abstract 5
5.5. Table of contents 5
5.6. Tables and Figures 5
5.7. Introduction 5
5.8. Objectives 5
5.9. Methods 5
5.10. Results 5
5.11. Discussion, including limitations 6
6. REFERENCES 6
6.1. How to write a reference 6
6.2. Reference methods 7
7. EDITORIAL CONSIDERATIONS 8
8. SUBMISSION AND QUALITY OF THE DISSERTATION 8
9. MARKING OF THE PROJECT 8
10. RECOMMENDED READING ON WRITING AND INTERPRETING MEDICAL LITERATURE 9

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PHARMACY HONOURS PROJECT GUIDELINES REVISION DATE OCT. 2018

1. OBJECTIVES OF THE HONOURS PROJECT

The main aim of the Honours Project is to provide a grounding scientific method and writing and
to teach responsibility in carrying out research. At the end of the year you should be able to:
• Perform a thorough literature search
• Develop an experiment to approach a scientific problem
• Perform basic methods appropriate to the project type
• Present and defend scientific work orally
• Write up a report on scientific work

2. GENERAL GUIDELINES
The Honours Project is undertaken in the final year of studies. Fridays are largely set aside for work on projects but
there is likely to be a lot of pressures particularly towards the end of the year. You are encouraged to throw yourself
wholeheartedly into your literature search and the start of your work as soon as possible so as to minimize pressures
on your time later in the year.

You are required to submit your project proposal and names of your supervisors to the project coordinator for
approval by the school before work can begin. Supervision of the project can be undertaken by members of the
school or other members of the University who are qualified in that field, however it is generally recommended
that you find a co-supervisor who is from the school, if you have an external supervisor who might, not be readily
available.

At the end of your project the writeup will undergo plagiarism check. Therefore, make sure the project report
should contain the your research work and it must be written your own words. If results by other authors are
quoted, acknowledgement must be made in the references. You must also ensure that all your documents are
BACKED UP as you go. Failure or loss of computer or flash discs will not be accepted as a reason for late
submission.

3. PAYING FOR YOUR PROJECT

Due to financial constraints, it is not possible for the school or the University to subsidise your research. Most
supervisors will be able to help to some degree from research funding but this is not always available. In such cases,
this will mean that you will have to pay for many of the materials, photocopying, travel, etc, yourself.

4. APPROACH TO THE PROJECT

For the first few weeks you should spent time getting to know the subject matter and the aims and objectives of
your project so as to have a clear idea of exactly what you will be doing. The background reading or literature search
is extremely important and will form the basis of the introduction you will write. Whist textbooks will be useful to
get an overall picture, you will be expected to get important ideas and concepts from journals (primary sources).
Therefore, you should acquaint yourself with ways to access the primary sources such as HINARI, PUBMED etc.
the method to be used should be understood before starting the research work. Consider different methods which
could be used to investigate your objectives and choose the most appropriate (knowing why it’s the most

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appropriate. You should think about this even if your supervisor has a specific method ready to follow. You should
also look at past student projects to see how other students have approached and presented their work. As a general
guideline you should aim to complete your initial literature search and method design within 6-8 weeks of the start
of the first semester.

4.1. ROLE OF THE SUPERVISOR

Ultimately the research project is YOUR project. However, your supervisor is there to help you and, in some cases,
where your work is part of larger funded project, they may give you strict requirements. They should guide you in
your literature search, help you formulate a research question and well-designed scientific methods to investigate
your research question and help you deal with the issues which may arise when conducting research. It is up to you
to arrange to meet with your supervisor on a regular basis- once a week is often a good starting point. Remember
that your supervisor will have other work to do, and does go on holiday etc. Don’t leave everything up to the last
minute and then expect them to give all their time to helping you. When you start writing up, you should give each
section to your supervisor to read through and make corrections and suggestions. They should also have an
opportunity to read through and comment on the whole dissertation before it is finally printed and bound.

If you experience any problems with your supervisor e.g. never available, unable to work together, you should first
try to work it out with them. If that fails, then consult with the projects coordinator or Director of the School. If
your supervisor is out of town for a prolonged period, they should make arrangements for someone else to help
you during that time. If you have any other problem which may influence your performance, please don’t hesitate
to contact your supervisor or the Director or other academic staff members.

4.2. Ethical issues

All projects are supposed to apply for ethical approval from the JREC and the relevant research site. If you are going
to do an experiment on animals, you or your supervisor will be required to apply for a licence permitting you to do
this. If your project involves using healthy volunteers or patients, or medical records you are required to get
approval from the Hospital Superintendent, the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe and the Medicines
Research Council or others as appropriate. Likewise, to gain access to facilities both either in and outside the
University, written permission may be needed. Again, consult your supervisor on these issues.
4.3. Presentations during the year
During the year you will be required to make at least 2 oral presentations on your research. The first will be about
6-8 weeks into the year when you present on the background to your study, your objectives and the methods you
intend to employ. Your colleagues and academic staff will ask you questions and give suggestions as to how better
direct your research.

The second will be about 6 months into the year when you will be expected to give a concise description of the
reason for your study, a concise description of the methods and then any results-to-date. The aim here is for you
to get suggestions and deal with questions regarding presentation of results and conclusions which will help in
your write up and in your oral examination.

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5. WRITING UP THE PROJECT

This section is intended to give you guidance in how to approach writing up your project. These are general
guidelines and different supervisors may have slightly different ways of approaching some aspects. You should
consider that you are writing so that the research can be understood by a scientist who is not familiar with your
work – it should flow from one section to another and all the necessary information should be presented. You
should write up the third person. i.e. avoid the use of I, me, my, etc.

5.1. Recommended Project Report Format

The research project write up should be in the standard format shown below. You should also look at some
examples of past projects in the school library to see what has been submitted in previous years.

1. Title Page
2. Declaration
3. Dedications
4. Acknowledgements
5. Abstract
6. Table of Contents
7. List of Tables
8. List of Figures
9. List of Abbreviations
10. Chapter 1: Introduction
11. Chapter 2: Literature Review
12. Chapter 3: Materials and Methods
13. Chapter 4: Results [Including Analysis]
14. Chapter 5: Discussion
15. Chapter 6: Conclusion
16. References
17. Appendices

5.2. Title
It is likely that the first title you associate with your project will undergo a few changes before the final title is
decided upon. The title should provide a succinct and accurate description of what the project is about. The final
title should only be decided upon once writing up has started or even when it has finished.
In the final project writeup the title page should include the following:-
• The title (which should be concise but informative).
• The author (student)
• The following statement:-
o Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Pharmacy Honours Degree.
• The date i.e month and year
• The supervisor(s)
• The School.
• The institution.

5.3. Acknowledgments
Credit must be given only to individuals and or institutions that have made a significant contribution to the project.
They should be brief and concise.

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5.4. Abstract
The purpose of the abstract is to tell the reader very briefly what you did and the most important results and
conclusions. The abstract can be structured or unstructured. It is written up after everything else has been written.
It should be concise, not be more than one page long. It can be typed in single-spacing form. There should be only
one or two sentences saying why you did the study, one or two sentences describing the method in general terms,
the important results e.g. statistically significant differences and the major conclusions.

5.5. Table of Contents

These can be put together once most of the writing has been done. It is necessary a list of major sections and
headings with the page numbers they appear on.

5.6. Tables and Figures

All tables and figures must have titles and be numbered. Be consistent when labeling tables and figures. Ensure
that tables and figures are situated at the relevant place in the document. Titles for tables should placed at the top
of the table and titles for figures are placed at the bottom of the figure.

5.7. Introduction/ Literature Review

The Introduction is written up largely as a type of story or tell the reader the background behind your work and
ultimately why you performed the research. It should start out general and then become more specific to the
problem or question which your study addressed. When your dissertation is examined, the Introduction will be
assessed to see how extensive your literature search was and whether you understand the underlying concepts. You
may be asked questions on this during your oral examination at the end of the year.

5.8. Objectives
The Introduction leads up to you starting objectives of the research project. Often there is one overall objective
and then a few specific objectives. The original objectives should be formulated after your literature search and
before you start the research. They should essentially stay unchanged although you may refine them a little when
you are writing up. Avoid making objectives too broad.

5.9. Methods
The Methods section tells the reader what you did, how you did it and using what materials if necessary. A
laboratory-based project should give a brief list of specific chemicals used and the company they were sourced
from. The particular method used should then be described giving all the details that would be required for
someone else to repeat your work without being unnecessarily verbose. A short paragraph on the statistical analysis
to be used is often helpful.

5.10. Results
In this section all you do is report on your findings without discussing them. There should be some text which
leads the reader through the results, highlights important findings and directs to the appropriate table or graph for
the details. Most of the data should be presented as either a table or a graph (not both) depending on which it is
most suited to. It is recommended that you carry out statistical analysis of the data gathered so as to strengthen

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your project. If you don’t have sufficient numbers for “good” statistics, you should still perform the tests and the
discuss the limitations of this in your discussion. You should also bear in mind the software required to carry out
the analysis and access to it.

5.11. Discussion, including limitations

In your Discussion, the reader finds out what you consider the reasons for your findings. You should also try and
discuss your findings in the light of other studies in the published literature. Any weaknesses in your work should
be pointed out – some supervisors like a separate section entitled Limitations after the Discussion. Note, that this
does not mean you state you didn’t have enough time to do what you wanted, but rather that you critically assess
your method and results. Your discussion should tie in with your stated objectives. If you failed to achieve any of
your objectives you should explain why. You may make recommendations for future studies in the particular area
you examined. This section should end with a paragraph in which you summarise your conclusions.

6. REFERENCES
The writing up of references should start when you first undertake your literature review. If you wait right until
the end you will find that you cannot find some of your references and that writing them up from scratch is very
time-consuming. You should start and maintain a reference list as you go through your project, adding references
as you come across relevant articles/books and finally deleting some when you finish writing up and know that
you don’t need to reference something. There are two accepted methods for referencing – the Author-Date
(Harvard) method and the Vancouver (numbering) system. If you used the Author-Date method, your references
should be listed alphabetically by surname. If you use the Vancouver method, the references are listed by number
according to when they appeared in the text (see later).

6.1. How to write a reference

There are a few different accepted ways of actually writing a reference but they are all characterized by the fact that
they have all the important information to help someone else find that reference if they needed to. Whichever
method is used, it is important to be consistent. This information varies slightly depending on whether it is a
journal or a book being referenced. Where more than 3 author’s names are present, the first 3 can be given followed
by et al. (meaning and others).
6.1.1. Journals
The author initials and surnames, title of the article, journal name, date of publication, volume number and pages
are the essential information. Issue numbers and issue dates do not need to be included. The names of journals
should be abbreviated according to accepted conventions e.g. British Medical Journal becomes Brit Med J, and
should be placed in italics or underlined.

For example:
Budd D, Elvers P (1978) The meaning of life. Existential J 42: 112-16.
Budd D, Elvers P. The meaning of life. Existential J 1978; 42: 112-16.
Budd D, Elvers P (1978) The meaning of life. Existential J 42: 112-16; 1978

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6.1.2. Books
The essential information here includes initials and names of editors and/or authors, title of the chapter if
appropriate, title of the book, name of the publisher, date of publication, edition number and page numbers.
For example:
Reynolds JEF (ed) Martindale. The extra pharmacopoeia. 36th Ed. Pharmaceutical Press: London, 2010 pp 1209-13.
Craft A, Buch T (1978) Haemophillia In: Moyo M (ed) Blood disorders. 2nd Ed. Coopers Press: Harare, 213-220.

6.2. Referencing methods

Two methods of referencing are acceptable – the Author-Date (Harvard) system and the Vancouver system. The
method which you choose to use will be up to you and your supervisor. In general it is recommended that the
Author-Date method is used since it is much simpler to follow.

6.2.1. Author-Date (Harvard System) referencing

In this method, when you make a comment or concept which you have derived from a reference, you place the
surname of the author and date of publication in the text. His may be as part of the sentence/phrase or in
parentheses after the text. In the Reference section, the references are listed in alphabetical order by author
surname.
For example:
In Text
Boyler and Francis (1989) found that 45% of teachers in secondary schools regularly shouted at their pupils.
However, this is in contradiction with another recent study (Tate et al. 1997) which found that all teachers
had raised their voices to students during the academic year.

References
Boyler CF, Francis K (1989) Tempers of teachers in secondary schools. J Education 14:12-16.
Tate W, Fry I, Willis D et al. (1997) Verbal abuse of secondary school children. Teacher 112:132-34.

6.2.2. Vancouver Numbering Method

In this system, each reference is given a consecutive number as it is referred to in the text. The numbers are
superscripted or placed in parentheses at the appropriate place. In the Reference section, the references are listed
in ascending order of number.
For example:
In Text
A study by Boyler and Francis¹ in the U.K. found that 45% of teachers in secondary schools regularly shouted at
their pupils. However, this is in contradiction with another recent study2 which found that all teachers had
raised their voices to students during the academic year.

References
1. Boyler CF, Francis K. Tempers of teachers in secondary schools. J Education 1989: 14: 12-16.
2. Tate W, Fry I, Willis D et al. Verbal abuses of secondary school children. Teacher 1997; 112:132-34

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7. EDITORIAL CONSIDERATIONS
7.1. Typing considerations
The project report should be typed in double-spacing form. Font size 12 preferably Times New Roman should be
used in the text. Laser/inkjet quality printing should be used. There must be a margin of at least 24 mm on the
left-hand side of the page and at least 10 mm on the right-hand side and 20 mm at the top and bottom of each
page.

7.2. Spelling and grammar

Do not make spelling and grammatical mistakes. If using a computer, use the spell and grammar check. Do not
mix American and British spellings but choose only one system of spelling. Write scientifically and DO NOT write
in the first person i.e. DO NOT use I and We.

7.3. Pagination
Pages should be numbered sequentially on the bottom right hand side of each page. The title page is should not
be numbered. The preliminary pages (declaration, acknowledegments etc) are numbered sequentially in roman
numerals [ii, iii, iv, v etc]. Arabic numbers from 1 appear from the first page of the main body of the thesis [i.e.
Chapter One].

7.4. Headings
Major headings [i.e. CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION] should be centered and in CAPITALS [and in BOLD].
Further subheadings may be arranged as side headings in bold. The subheadings can be numbers e.g. in the
introduction as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc.

7.5. Paragraphs
One line of a paragraph should not be carried over to another page. A new paragraph should not begin at the
bottom of a new page unless at least two lines can appear on the page. All paragraphs should be indented in a
consistent manner OR a line should appear between them.

8. SUBMISSION AND QUALITY OF THE DISSERTATION

The project must be normally handed by the end of April or as advised. usually 2 weeks before the end of the
lectures. THREE spiral bound copies of the project must be submitted to the school for marking. After marking
TWO executive bound projects are to be submitted to the school. You should look at some examples of past
projects in the school library to see what has been submitted in previous years. The outside cover of the dissertation
should bear the Title, BPharm (Hons), your name and the year. The spine should be stamped with your name and
the year. Make sure that before submitting project a declaration page containing the student’s signature, the
supervisor(s) and the date of submission is inserted within the project.

9. MARKING OF THE PROJECT

The project will be marked by the supervisor(s) AND and two independent staff member (internal examiner). If
the project is not up to standard the student will be requested to resubmit his/her project after modifications within
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PHARMACY HONOURS PROJECT GUIDELINES REVISION DATE OCT. 2018

three months after publication of results. Marks are awarded for Presentation, Abstract and References,
Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. The average of the 3 marks will be awarded to you except in
circumstances where one mark is very different from the other two. In this case, more weight is given to the internal
examiner’s mark.

10. RECOMMENDED READING ON WRITING FOR BIOMEDICAL JOURNALS AND INTERPRETING MEDICAL LITERATURE
1. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. New
Engl J Med 1997: 336: 309-315.
2. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Getting your bearings (deciding what the paper is about). Brit Med J 1997; 315: 243-6.
3. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Assessing the methodological quality of published papers. Brit Med J 1997; 315: 305-8.
4. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Papers that summarise other papers (systematic reviews and meta-analyses). Brit Med J 1997; 315:
5. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Statics for the non-statistician. I: Different types of data need different statistical tests. Brit Med
J 1997; 315: 364-6
6. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Papers that report drug trials. Brit Med J 1997; 315: 480-3
7. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Papers that report diagnostic or screening tests. Brit Med J 1997; 315: 540-3
8. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Papers that tell you what things cost (economic analyses). Brit Med J 1997; 315: 596-9.
9. Greenhalgh T. Correction: How to read a paper: Papers that report diagnostic or screening tests. Brit Med J 1997; 315:942
10. Jaeschke R, Guyatt G, Sackett D L. User’s guides to the medical literature. III. How to use an article about a diagnostic test. A. Are the
results of the study valid? J Am Med Assoc 1994; 271:389-91
11. Levine M, Walter S, Lee H, Haines T, Holbroook A, Moyer V. User’s guides to the medical literature. IV. How to use an article about
harm. J Am Med Assoc 1994; 271:1615-9.
12. Laupacis A, Wells G, Richardson W S, Tugwell P. User’s guides to the medical literature. V. How to use an article about prognosis. J
Am Med Assoc 1994; 271; 234-7.
13. Richardson W S, Detsky A S. Users’ guides to the medical literature. VII. How to use a clinical decision analysis. A. Are the results of the
study valid? J Am Med Assoc 1995; 273: 1292-5.
14. Wilson M C, Hayward R S, Tunis S R, Bass E B, Guyatt G. Users’ guides to the medical literature. VIII. How to use clinical practice
guidelines. B. Will the recommendations help me in caring for my patients? J Am Med Assoc 1995; 274:1630-2.
15. O’Brien B J, Heyland D, Richardson W S, Levine M, Drummond M F. Users’ guides to the medical literature. XIII. How to use an article
on economic analysis of clinical practice. B. What are the results and will they help me in caring for my patients? J Am Med Assoc 1997;
277:1802-6.

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