Health Medical Homework Help

Please write a discussion and respond to this 2 peers’ Discussion Prompts

Discussion:

• State the research question you have chosen for your signature assignment and discuss it in terms of qualitative and quantitative research.
  • Provide examples of quantitative and qualitative research you have found in the text or your own research.
  • What are the pros and cons of each type of research?
• Respond to at least two of your classmates’ or instructor’s posts. Provide input on your classmates’ research questions. Which type of research do you think would be most appropriate to answer the question?
• ALL citations and references needs to be APA 7th edition format. THANK YOU

My signature assignment is a Research Study Question about Epilepsy.

Epileptic individuals are in many cases linked to having seizures and convulsions that affect their well-being. What are the social effects that the situation brings to an individual living with epilepsy?

Peer# 1

My research question is: Is there a correlation between increased BMI and increased intake of artificially sweetened beverages in night shift nurses?

In the research that I have conducted, most of the information I have found tends to be quantitative research where there were detailed studies performed to obtain their data. Specific groups of people are sought out to obtain data, and very specific data is obtained to be able to answer the hypothesis (Jacobsen, 2017). This is a method that I will be using to obtain information to answer my research question. My population is very specific in working with night shift nurses. I will be using a source population that is well defined subset (night shift workers) from a larger population (nurses) (Jacobsen, 2017). One such study that I found was titled “Association of Rotating Night Shift Work with BMI and Abdominal Obesity among Nurses and Midwives” (Peploneska, et al., 2015. In this article they also used the same population as I will be using. They took detailed measurements of the body to obtain BMI starting information. From this point, they chronicled their nurses BMI over the course of 4 years. Throughout the process, they made continual measurements including BMI, “waist to hip ratio (WHR) and waist to height ratio (WHR)” (Peploneska, et al., 2015). Over the course of the 4-year period, they sought to see if there was a positive or negative correlation between increase in BMI in the nurses that worked only night shifts for those 4 years. The pro of using this type of research, is that I can get specific data, similar to what I will be collecting. It will also allow me to compare my research data to other’s data collected, to see if we are getting similar data, or if my research is an outlier.

As most of the research that I have found is qualitative, I was able to find one study that was qualitative. In this study, the focus was not on the specific data, but more lenient in data collection (Jacobsen, 2017). In this study titled, “Sugar-Sweetened beverages and Genetic Risk of Obesity”, the researchers utilized subjective data in the form of questionnaires for the participants. Instead of actually monitoring the specific amount of sugar consumed, as a qualitative study would do, this study just asked participants to disclose their average amount of sugary beverage consumed. In the terms of what my question asks, this type of research would be good for background data and also for weeding out individuals from outside my population requirements. Unfortunately, when looking at things like quantities of sugary beverages consumed, and BMI stats, this type of research would be quite a limitation for me.

Peer# 2

Research Question: What are the social determining factors that influence an individual’s decision to resist vaccines?

This topic is well suited for a combination of both quantitative and qualitative research, or mixed methods.

Quantitative research is used to demonstrate generalizable facts like – people are hesitant to get vaccinated. Quantitative research answers questions such as: Who is vaccine hesitant? Where do they live? When did they become vaccine hesitant? I will most likely use surveys with close-ended questions and recruit using online tools and social media platforms.

Qualitative research is used to better understand the individual experiences and thoughts of participants. Why are they vaccine hesitant? What experiences or information has led them to make this decision? I could gather this information either through individual interviews, focus groups or by doing a literature review. Individuals who participate in the initial quantitative study can be recruited as participants for more in-depth interviews or focus groups.

I have come across a lot of information that has been gathered through both quantitative and qualitative methods. In their clinical review, Shen & Dubey (2019), both physicians, did an in-depth literature review related to vaccine hesitancy in order to develop guidance for primary care physicians in addressing vaccine hesitation among parents (pp. 175-176).

Pros and Cons: Qualitative research can be relatively inexpensive but the data is more difficult to analyze, therefore the conclusions can be less definitive. Quantitative data is easier analyze, but the development and design of a quantitative study can be time consuming (developing survey questions, recruiting participants and analyzing results). You can also include a larger sample size in a quantitative study compared to a qualitative study (West Coast University, n.d.). The fact that the sample size can be larger makes the survey results more generalizable.