Analysis of Research Methods
The families of people living with brain injuries require many resources to cater for the wellbeing of the patients. Sometimes they get fixed with the responsibilities of taking care of the patients and end up needy because they lack sufficient time to look for money. They also face stigmatization sometimes from the society which is a great challenge to them. These people need social support from rehabilitation which will enable them to continue caring for their sick ones. They also need funds from different sources to enable them to cater for the drugs, food, and clothing. It is therefore important to support them in order to enable them to continue taking care of their patients.
Appropriateness of Qualitative Research Designs
The qualitative research design is applicable when developing the questionnaire for family members living with people with brain injuries. This is because it is an ongoing process and since the conditions take long to heal, it can be appropriate for use. It involves assessing the impacts of the goals, research methodology, theories for application and the questionnaire. This design fits with its surroundings and involves interaction and interconnection among different components of the design. In qualitative research, interview and observation are combined to bring out more holistic and understand of the area of study. There are several benefits of using qualitative research designs. Flexibility is one of them as one can be able to adjust the research design in the course of research. There is subjectivity where the research measurements are personalized. There is also a great depth of understanding while applying the qualitative research designs in the research work (Polit & Beck, 2017). This qualifies the use of the qualitative research designs in formulating research questionnaire to be used in carrying research with the family members living with brain-injured patients.
Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research Studies
Research ethics is the manner through which the researchers should treat their clients during their work. This mainly entails respecting the individual rights, for instance, the respect for the autonomy of the people, maintaining privacy by ensuring that there is no exposure of any information obtained from the research work and ensuring that the patient is secure from any kind of harm. The ethics have been a reflection of the methodology because of the usage of new technology and bringing out some problems which are distinct. However, ethics has been associated with several challenges like the issue of procedures concerning informed consent. This is where there information delivery to the participant involving all the aspects in the test. The aspects are important in deciding whether the participant is ready to take part in the given research work.
Challenges associated with informed consent include language barriers, false expectations of vulnerable group perceptions of the patients, the involvement of children and religious influence. The language barrier can lead to misunderstandings of the details in the consent which leads to withdrawal from the research work in later stages. Some patients refuse to take part in the research study due to fear of fraud in the clinical research while others fear to be used as models of the experiment which is a great challenge towards the researchers. Another challenge is the religious influence where there is a conflict between behavior rules set by the religion of the participant and the experimental methodology. Finally, the involvement of children in the research work becomes a challenge when the children disagree with assent while the parents agree with consent.
There is the issue of confidentiality which is a challenge in case the researcher is unable to keep the patient’s private information in a confidential manner. The client has the right to withhold as much information as they wish. The failure of the researcher to maintain confidentiality can lead to the issue of being sued by the court of law. The researchers are highly challenged by maintaining confidentiality especially when the information is very personal. This also happens when the research sample is small. People who wait at the cues in the emergency room fear giving out information to researchers because they believe that the personal and private information might be disclosed. There is a challenge of the risk-benefit ratio in the research ethics where there is less turnover of the number of the patients who are informed and those who consent to the informed consent (Houghton, Casey, Shaw & Murphy, 2010). This is mainly caused by doubts with the participants about the participation of the research work. When carrying out research with families who live with people with brain injuries, this becomes a great challenge as because there is hesitation to join the study work in spite of having been informed about the research work.
Critique of the Quantitative and Qualitative or Mixed Methods
There are several methods of qualitative research and one of them is the case study. This involves explanatory, descriptive or exploratory. There is also grounded theory which involves explanation behind theories. The narrative method brings together a consequence of events and also ethnography which the researcher gets in the world of the participants in order to meet the goals. Quantitative methods deal with numbers or measurement (Polit & Beck, 2017). The three methods are questionnaire, observation, and interviews. The questionnaire is always a series of questions the researcher submits to the participants in order to get the desired response. Interviewing involves a situation where the researcher communicates verbally with the participants in order to achieve the desired data. This be can over the phone or face to face (Walker, 2011). On the other hand, observation which involves obtaining data through observing the environment. Simple observation is more preferable in collecting data in research.
It is recommended that researchers should keenly explain their methods, information sources and actual figures used to calculate clinical significance. There should be a clear set of terms to reduce misinterpretations of findings and facilitate cross-study comparisons (Ryan-Nicholls & Will, 2009). There is a change in the clinical research where the focus of the practitioners and researchers has shifted from the sampling error to the things that usually happens in the patient’s therapy. This has created a healthy debate in the meaning of the change of manifestation and their association to change in life quality without interfering with the adherence to clinical perspectives.
Conclusion
Relatives and people living with patients with brain injuries usually have challenges dealing with the challenges that come with it. Clinical centers use special programs to help them achieve their care goals and to educate them to deal with their patients. The research to determine the success of such a program helps to determine the success and failures of the program. The research ethics and other parameters applied in qualitative and quantitative research determine the success and validity of the final data from the research. The analysis in the essay shows the use of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods in research.
References
Houghton, C. E., Casey, D., Shaw, D., & Murphy, K. (2010). Ethical challenges in qualitative research: Examples from practice. Nurse Researcher, 18(1), 15–25.
Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2017). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for nursing practice (10th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer.
Ryan-Nicholls, K. D., & Will, C. I. (2009). Rigour in qualitative research: Mechanisms for control. Nurse Researcher, 16(3), 70–85.
Smith, J., Bekker, H., & Cheater, F. (2011). Theoretical versus pragmatic design in qualitative research. Nurse Researcher, 18(2), 39–51.
Walker, W. (2011). Hermeneutic inquiry: Insights into the process of interviewing. Nurse Researcher, 18(2), 19–27.
