NUR: 553 Developing Research 2

To show an in-depth understanding of the research process and its components this assignment will use a study conducted by Wills et al. (2005) to critique. Within the assignment there will be a description of the qualitative methodology used, followed by a discussion of the strengths and weakness and its appropriateness and relevance of the design for the study. It will then go on to critique the title of the study, the abstract, the literature review, the method and design and the data collection section of the study. To conclude this assignment there will a brief summary.

A qualitative research approach seeks to understand humans by exploring their experiences, attitudes and behaviour (Dawson, 2009). It relies on methods that allow the researcher into the personal, intimate and private world of the participants (Polgar and Thomas, 2008). Qualitative research designs allow for in-depth assessments and the opportunity to put participant’s responses in context (Parahoo, 2006). Data collection methods include in-depth interviews, observations, recordings and other documentation (Parahoo, 2006). In qualitative research the hypotheses are generated during data collection and analysis, and measurement tends to be subjective (Parahoo, 2006). The flexibility in the nature of qualitative exploration also applies to the size of the samples and the sampling techniques (Parahoo, 2006). According to Polit (2010) qualitative research is based on the quality of data collected rather than quantity of participants involved, the sample size in a qualitative study tends to be smaller than in a quantitative study where sample sizes tend to be larger (Gerrish, 2010). There are four common approaches in qualitative research ethnography, phenomenology, discourse analysis and grounded theory (Parahoo, 2006) and these all take different positions