Question

John and Marissa have a 4-year-old son (Micah) who suffers from cerebral palsy. Their life is very challenging because they both have to work and recently lost their home to foreclosure. Micah is being discharged to home this afternoon and Marissa is obviously anxious. Marrissa states, "I just feel like we are always out of touch when we go home. I have other children to care for and we are always on the go."

1. Propose a qualitative research study purpose that would help the nurse provide better care for Micah's family.

2. If you were to set up a qualitative study for families of patients like Micah, what qualitative design would you use? What is the rationale for your choice?

3. If your study used purposive sampling, define it and include ideas for inclusion and exclusion factors.

4. Given your inclusion and exclusion criteria with purposive sampling, how would you recruit participants? How many participants would be needed? Be sure to provide rationales for your responses.

Answer 1

1. Propose a qualitative research study purpose that would help the nurse provide better care for Micah's family.

To describe the participative activities occurring in the parent-sibling circle of the families of children with cerebral palsy in relation to the care of a child. By the better understanding of the participative activities occurring in the parent-sibling circle of the families of children with cerebral palsy in relation to the care of the child, the nurse will be able to provide better support to the family of the same type.

2. If you were to set up a qualitative study for families of patients like Micah, what qualitative design would you use? What is the rationale for your choice?

A descriptive qualitative study would be sufficient to provide effective results. The descriptive qualitative design is useful in obtaining rich data and achieving the purpose of understanding of the phenomenon. It can provide flexibility or variability of methods used. The explanation or description of the participative activities occurring in the parent-sibling circle of the families of children with cerebral palsy in relation to the care of the child can be obtained by the descriptive qualitative research design. Flexible methods can be used to collect information from the families about the specific events experienced them.

The participative activities occurring in the parent-sibling circle of the families of children with cerebral palsy in relation to the care of the child is poorly understood phenomena and the researchers have to understand it before quantification. The data can be collected from relatively small groups who have experienced the phenomenon using loosely structured interviews or by observing the participants.

3. If your study used purposive sampling, define it and include ideas for inclusion and exclusion factors.

A purposive sample is a non-probability sampling technique and opted based on characteristics of a population of interest and the purpose of the aim of the study.It is also termed as judgmental, selective, or subjective sampling. The samples will be a non-representative subset of some larger population. When the researcher has a specific group in mind the method of purposive sampling will be accurate. The population being investigated are based on the pure judgement of the researcher.

·         A wide range of sampling techniques can be used in the qualitative research designs like homogeneous sampling, critical case sampling and expert sampling.

·         Generalization is possible

·         Flexibility of using different techniques based on the need in different stages.

Inclusion criteria:

The family of the child with cerebral palsy with both biological parents and at least a sibling.

Parents of children with cerebral palsy.

The child with a disorder is between 1 year and 7 years

The family lives in a specific geographical area.

Exclusion criteria:

The families of children including other genetic disorders.

Extended families.

4. Given your inclusion and exclusion criteria with purposive sampling, how would you recruit participants? How many participants would be needed? Be sure to provide rationales for your responses.

The development of a recruitment strategy is essential to obtain the accurate samples.

·         Start the recruitment of participants as early as possible: This will help to provide enough time for selecting samples.

• Contacting other personnel with similar researchers: The research experience of other experts helps to give ideas in collecting samples
• Going to the target field like day care centres or hospitals: the people with the inclusion criteria can be obtained from the target fields
• Literature review to collect similar information: It always acts as the backbone of research
• Cold outreach via email to obtain information: This is an excellent method to obtain information in descriptive research.
• Posters inviting people to participate in the research: will attract the attention of people and may be helpful to obtain the samples.
• Invitation letters
• Data protection consents are to be offered
• Winning the confidence of people who control access to the sample
  

The sample size :

Descriptive qualitative researchers are usually undertaken using surveys or interviews. Understanding of the target population is very important in determining sample size.

The required degree of accuracy determines the sample size. The sample size increases with the increase in the degree of accuracy.

Proper statistical methods can be used to determine the sample size.

The researchers suggest theta single case studies can be done by including 15 to 30 interviews.¹

Reference:

Bryan Marshall, Peter Cardon, Amit Poddar & Renee Fontenot, Does Sample Size Matter in Qualitative Research?: A Review of Qualitative Interviews in is Research, Journal of Computer Information Systems, Volume 54, 2013 - Issue 1