ONE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Column 1

Description of the research

The research is about addressing the knowledge gap to the health care systems about this issue of medical complexity the children.

Column 2

Your assessment of

strengths and weaknesses

of each research component you are summarising in column 1 (using academic references).

Author

Date and Source (using Harvard referencing system)

Altman et al. (2018)

Altman, L., Zurynski, Y., Breen, C., Hoffmann, T. and Woolfenden, S., 2018. A qualitative study of health care providers’ perceptions and experiences of working together to care for children with medical complexity (CMC). BMC health services research, 18(1), p.70. 

Aims/Objectives of the research

It has been found that those children with medical complexity face a long range of health issues which leave remarkable impact on their quality of life in future. This research paper is aimed at addressing the knowledge gap to the health care systems about this issue to the children.  The article further captures the experiences and the perceptions of the health providers regarding the provision of the health care service to the children of 0-18 years.

 The chosen research topic for this paper by the authors has its own strengths. First of all, it is a serious issue in the society especially in the health care industry where the children with medical complexity face a wide range of physical, behavioural and developmental problems as suggested by Bernard (2017). The issues are still unknown to the most of the health care systems. Moreover, in Australia, there is still no literature based on the experiences of the health care system during the management of CMC. This article would open new ways of knowledge that can subsequently reduce the issues.

Any theoretical points? Any particular theory, model, framework is being used/mentioned?

For example, are the authors using positivist theories?

Phenomenological theories?

Social constructionist theories?

Critical theory? Explain which theory or theories are being used?

The research paper has employed the social constructionist theory for better understanding the topic and the rationale of the research. The social constructionism has originated in order to come in terms of the nature with reality. It initiated in more than thirty year ago and has been connected with the qualitative research in the post-modern era. This theory has its profound influence on the grounded theory and its impact on the methodology of the research has to be evaluated in order to understand the core concepts related to the theory. The theory needs to be understood properly so that the surrounding arguments can be validated.  The social constructionism has a main focus on the social connotations. It is a theory that measures the jointly constructed understandings of the world which forms the foundation of shared assumptions regarding reality. The social constructionism queries about what is defined by the society and humans to be the reality.

The social constructionist theory is mainly applied as a theory of personality along with being a system of transforming the meaning –making process. This theory is largely used in the therapeutic contexts. Hence, it appreciates the constructive nature of experiences and the meaning attributed to the experiences. It is a form of critique.

Research question?

Please summarise the research question in your own words in Column 1

The paper is aimed at answering the following research questions:

· What is family capacity to negotiate the health care system, the medical difficulties of the children and the psychological complexity of the families.

· what are the capacities of the health care providers and what are their skills, resources and time availability?

· What is the system capacity of the health care services and their cultures ?

The research questions are suitable to the topic of the research because without step by step answering of the fundamental questions related with the topic the research could not have received a structure for further proceedings.

Methodology& Research Design

Could you identify the methodological strategy used by this research and the research design?

Please explain them in your own words

The authors have applied a qualitative research study. The in –depth interviews of the groups, stakeholder forums and individuals were undertaken. It was done using a semi-structured interview guides. The forums of the stakeholders were audio recorded. The field notes were also taken of the groups, individuals, stakeholders. The key themes were analysed using the inductive method.

The article has used the qualitative research study which has its own advantages and disadvantages. The descriptions cannot be transformed into numbers in the qualitative research methodologies. This kind of research studies provide with the details of human behaviour, personality characteristics and emotions which the quantitative studies lack (Flick 2018). However, one of the drawbacks of the qualitative research methodology is that it cannot validate the trends as the quantitative research studies could.

What are the research methods/tools used for collecting the data?

The project was undertaken in SCHN which offers more than 90% of tertiary paediatric care in the New South Wales with three of the local health districts (LHD) and three of the primary health network partners. In the entire country of Australia, SCHN is the biggest paediatric health care service provider with 44,000 inpatient admissions, 86,000 ED presentations and 136,790 bed days each year.  The interview questions comprised of experiences of challenges, enablers and the families of the CMC perceived needs that were the foundations of the development of a scope for integrated care.

The research has used data collection as the data collection method. Since data is an essential component of conducting research and evaluation, it has to authentic and reliable as much as possible. The interview method is considered to be one of the key data qualitative data collection method especially for the social researches.  The face to face interviews are more useful because the level of authenticity is greater in this method.

 What is the type of data analysis the research is being used?

The audio recordings of the stakeholders were transcribed verbatim and these were reviewed against the project manager provided transcripts. The group and individual interview field notes were also reviewed by the project manager. The reliability and the validity of the development of themes were measured by the received participant feedbacks and the stakeholder’s feedbacks. The thematic analysis was done by the useful feedbacks.

The data analysis method is efficient. Since feedback is used to describe the information and criticism about the behaviour from an individual, it is suitable for this research. However, the article could have used graphs and excel spread sheets too for the analysis of the data (Glaser and Strauss 2017).

What rea the main findings/results/outcomes identified by the research?

The result of the qualitative research was that one hundred and three providers participated in the stakeholder forums and the interviews across three of the local health districts, organizations on the primary health care field and a tertiary paediatric hospital network. The providers expressed their concerns about the family capacity in terms of negotiating the system. It has been found after the research that lack in the capacity of the health care provider regarding their skills, availability and time to handle CMC was one of the key problems. Within a health system these issues occurred having impaired capacity in the fragmentation of limited communication between the providers of health care.

The findings of the article are well enough to proceed with the arguments and answer the research questions (Lewis 2015). The findings are the stepping stone for the development of the entire research and the conclusion of the whole discussion.

 Are you learning anything out of the discussion of the research? If yes, say what. If no, why not?

Yes

Since the article contains huge data that validate the truthfulness of the topic, I have learned that we need to do so many things with the families, the health care providers and the health care systems in order to ensure that we have efficient care models for the children with medical complexity (Hussein 2015). A model is needed to be developed where there will be a holistic approach to the CMC needs assessments. There are a lot to learn and act from the article.

Is the conclusion of the article adequate?

The article concludes with giving an overview of the entire article and highlighting the main topics. The conclusion implies that it is important to understand and refer to the challenges which are experienced by the health care providers. It further says that the providers need to go through proper training and there must be additional time and coordination of care, communication among the services.

According to my assessment of the article, the conclusion could have included few of the minute aspects described in the article such as a short summary of tables, the strengths and limitations of the article along with giving a brief overview of the methodology employed. The conclusion is short as compared to the length of the article and inadequate in summarizing the whole paper concerns.

ONE QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Column 1

Description of the research

The research is all about social anxiety and alcohol intake along with the subsequent disorders.

Column 2

Your assessment of

strengths and weaknesses

 (using academic references).

1. Research design.

The research design of this article employs the exploratory research. The article explores the cognitive and motivational factors which are related to heavy drinking in specific contexts under social anxiety such as feeling sadness, anger, meeting new people and living with roommates.

The exploratory research design is appropriate for this research because the main intention of this type of research design is to explore the research questions and usually applied in the problems that has not yet been solved properly (Choy 2014). The advantages of this kind of research design is its adaptability ton change and it also lays the groundwork on which future studies can begin. The exploratory studies can save time too.

2. Aims/Objectives of the research.

There are individuals who are more prone to social anxiety are clinically approved to be at greater risk. They are more open to the alcohol use disorder. The relation between social anxiety and drinking disorders need to be taken into account because this connection usually worsens the condition in the youth. The negative emotional and personal situations can be feeling sad or angry and also before the physical intimacy or sexual intercourse. The aim of the paper is to identify the motivational or cognitive factors that are closely associated with drinking under these high risk conditions. It is supposed that the identification of these factors would be useful in the growth and advancement of treatment and remedy for these kinds of high-risk drinkers.

 Although the selection of topic is apt and the objectives are also relevant, the article has its own limitations too. First of all, the cross-sectional type of data restricts the reader’s ability to come to any conclusion in terms of casual relations (Noble and Smith 2015). The method it employs is self-report that is prone to be erroneous. Apart from these, the sample was Caucasian.

3. Sampling method. How were participants selected?

The study is dedicated to the evaluation of the influence of motives having used an already available where it is found that the socially anxious people engage more in the heavy drinking process especially in the personal or negative emotional contexts. The participants were selected through the survey method.  

The survey method is used in this research which has so many strengths along with some weaknesses too. It is an excellent way of gathering huge amount of information. It is a cost effective method too. As a contrast, it has many drawbacks too such as it is inflexible in certain situations (Noble and Smith 2015). Validity also becomes an issue with the survey methods. However , as a whole it is a useful method.

4. Appropriate population used?

Through the help of the Department of Psychology an undergraduate sample was selected. The participants were from the public University in the Southern US. The undergraduate was surveyed for observing the under the high –risk drinking contexts.

The used population is quite suitable because the university in the southern US is surrounded with city vibes and metropolitan culture. Hence, it is likely that the chances of excessive alcohol intake are high.

5. Adequate sample size?

The final sample size came down to N-232 from N- 664 which is not adequate enough for such a research that holds significant importance for the society and for the future of youth.

6. Inclusion/Exclusion criteria of participants.

Twenty participants from the number 664 were excluded because they provided incomplete survey responses. The item responses greater than 3.29 deviations of the standards were considered outliers and were excluded. Almost 28.5% of the majority were included.  

It is a better decision to exclude those participants who provide incomplete or erroneous answers to the survey questions (McCusker and Gunaydin 2015). It will positively reduce the possibility of wrong outcomes.

7. Response rate.

In the final sample that numbered 232, the response rate of female was 69.4 %. The mean age of these respondents was 19.32. Among 232 people 97.4% belonged to Latino and non-Hispanic .44.4 5 were unemployed and 3.05 were part time or half employed. 77.6% among them were not the members of the Greek system. Most of the participants were 89.1%.

The response rate is sufficient to generalize the topic and the outcomes.

8. Reliability, Internal consistency.

The Social phobia scale (SPS) and Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) were used to assess the social anxiety. The Drinking Motives Questionnaire –Revised was used to measure the drinking motives (DMQ-R). The use of alcohol was evaluated via Drinking Context Scale –Revised (DCS-R).

The results are much reliable because the survey results were evaluated with powerful measures which has demonstrated proper internal consistency in both the undergraduate and community samples (Hussein 2015). The Drinking Context Scale –Revised is a special and reliable measuring technique and thus perfect for this research.

9. Presentation of results.

In Table Format

Tables are the easiest and the most understandable method of presenting the data and the results.

10. Main conclusion of the study. Can the findings be generalised?

The conclusion says that the research has provided the negative drinking motive being instrumental for most of the heavy situational drinking among the young undergraduates. It further says that the findings are contributory to the already available literatures on components of alcohol interventions.

According to my observations the findings can be personalized so that a particular group of individuals who are under poorer treatment. However, since the sample size could have been wider the findings can be less generalized (Choy 2014). On the other hand, since the measurement techniques are reliable, it can be generalized to most of the youths in the contemporary world.