Question

Directions:

Create a research project that you could conduct, if you had an unlimited budget with which to work.   

Tasks:

1.Discuss the topic coping with the death of another person

2.Create a question to which you would be interested in discovering an answer.

3.Select one of the three classic developmental designs, either a cross-sectional design, a longitudinal design, or a sequential design, that you would use to conduct your research.   

4.State who you would have as participants in your study.

5.State what you would ask the participants in your study to do.

Sample of good work:

One area of interest in the field of death and bereavement is that of counseling the bereaved. I would be interested to know if different techniques are more beneficial than others, for helping those who are bereaved. Using a longitudinal design, I would be interested to see if 600 adults would have better outcomes after one year, when given different techniques to cope with their losses. I would randomly divide the adults into three groups. One group would receive one hour of listening to classical music, one group would receive one hour spending time with an animal, like a dog or a cat, and the third group would receive counseling as usual. The participants would be asked to complete a questionnaire before the study began, and at the end of the study. The groups would be compared to each other at the end of the study to see which group had the best outcomes. The participants could also be compared to themselves, pre test and post test, to measure outcomes.   

Answer 1

One area of interest in the field of death and bereavement is that of the role of social support in coping with the bereaved. My research question in this area would be to find out if the different types of social support namely peers, other family members, neighbours, religious community,etc, are helpful in increasing the bereaved individual’s capacity to mourn and overcome their grief. The study could benefit from a longitudinal design, where 600 adults would be studied for their coping experiences and followed for one year to see if the presenceof a strong social support would have better outcomes after one year in order to cope with their losses. In the study, the adult participants would be followed using non-participant observation and survey method and divided into three groups. One group who has the support of peers, one group who rated the intervention by other surviving family members as a positive influence and the third group of bereaved adults who reported the greater involvement with neighbourhood and religious community during the period of bereavement. The participants would be asked to complete a questionnaire before the study began, and at the end of the study. At the end of the study, the groups would be then compared to each other to see the differences in the effective coping between the three groups. In addition, the longitudinal design would offer the advantage of studying the effect of social support on each participant over time by comparing the outcomes for each participants in pre test and post test on a within group contingency differences.