Comparing Qualitative Designs
The first research was done by Harding& Perkins (2008). The purpose of this research is to explore and report the experiences of male nurses in the context of providing physical intimate care. This research seeks to find out why male nurses are victimized for applying the intimate touch in their clinical practice (Harding & Perkins, 2008).
The design of this research is descriptive since it aims to obtain information on the status of a phenomenon which has been previous research. Unlike in a longitudinal design the research does not look at all aspects of the previous research but only focuses on the discourse in the application of the intimate touch by male nurses in their practice. Despite of it providing answers of how the situation occurs, it does not clearly explain why it occurs but rather aims at broadening the understanding of the situation.
The research design does not adequately address the issues that are face by male nurses but rather seems to explore the situation that the male nurses are in at this point of time. The research design seeks to give additional information rather find the cause of the problem that was identified in an earlier research. Since the research design seeks to give get information on the experiences of male nurses at that particular time, the researcher had to use snowball sampling to ensure that the participant in there research shared the same characteristics as those involved in the earlier research. Since they researches were going to deliberately work with men it was also suitable to use purposive sampling ((Harding & Perkins, 2008)).
The data analysis for the research was rigorous demanding that the researchers ensured that all the information was thoroughly looked are and review before they reported their findings. This was essential due to the sensitivity of the issue they were tackling and also to ensure that the information they collected was not repetitive. Therefore, the researchers reread their data and applied the use codes and categorizing to establish similarities. The researches created pseudo names for their participant to ensure that there was anonymity of the data even from the source. Hence, making sure that none of the participants could be traced using the raw data. This approaches made the process of analysis to become complex since the number of participants was quiet small.
The researchers made effort to ensure that the research met the ethical standards of doing a research. Therefore, before carrying out the study, researchers ensured that they got the necessary approval by the relevant bodies to make it legal. Due to the sensitivity of the issues that they were handing, the researchers ensured that they were honest with the participants by giving them all the information about the research and possible implications it may have on them before they agreed to participate. The researchers were also conscious of their social responsibility and ensured that they protected the participants by using anonymity.
The use of a different design for this kind of research would have made it difficult for the researchers to achieve their goals which primarily to critically analyses the situation and give more insight to the occurrences. Other designs are not suitable for this kind of research. However, if the researcher were to look at all aspects of the previous research then longitudinal design would have been also appropriate.
The second paper was carried out by Golafshani (2003). The purpose of research was to analyze how reliability and validity are in in qualitative research and provide an exhaustive discussion on their application. This research seeks to enhance self-knowledge of researchers by explaining first; how reliability issues are dealt within qualitative and quantitate research; secondly how validity issues are dealt with in qualitative and quantitate research and its suitability in each of the type of research.
In this research the researcher use a philosophical design in carrying out the research. This design allows the researchers to provide clarity of the general principles of carrying out research. The role of this kind of this kind or research is to provide in depth understanding to other researchers who use different methods of doing research. In most common cases, researchers can freely and interchangeably use different research methods. The paper concludes by exploring the issue of triangulation in both quantitative and qualitative research and how the use of it influence the way people understand reliability and validity in qualitative research.
Since the researches wanted to give insight so as to enhance understanding of the use of validity and reliability in qualitative analysis the publication does not fully achieve this because of most of the document talks about aspects of quantitative research. The data sources used in this research were mainly secondary; hence, the researcher did not need to use interviews or questionnaires. The researcher’s academic documents which contain information about the use of validity and reliability in research were also majorly quantitative in nature.
Data analysis was particularly critical in this research since the methods used highly relied on academic works and other written document, thus the researcher evidently took time to patiently analyze the information. The design of this research allowed for the use of works done by other people. In any case were a person uses the works of another person it is ethical and also a requirement for the person using the works to acknowledge the efforts by citing the source for the origin of the works. The researchers in this article put in proper citations to ensure that all the sources of the works they used are properly cited.
The third study was carried out by Brown (2008). The purpose of this research is to bring to attention the change faced by postgraduate students in international colleges. This research aims at providing an understanding of the situations in which international students often find themselves in when in foreign schools. The research equations are: how does difficulty in communication and expression affect the emotions of a student; what is the relationship between difficulties in communication and emotional state. The study involved both interviews and observing international students over a period of 12 months. One major finding of the study is related to the English language where most students in the study were found out to have a disadvantage and hence anxiety as a result of poor spoken English.
This design used in this research is that of a case study. This is because the researchers focused on the international student and not the entire population of students or immigrants who may be having similar challenges. This specific approach is very important to make the study more effective (Brown, 2008).
This research effectively addresses the issues that are faced by international students. In the study, the researcher adequately utilize the information that they collected form the participant and from other data sources to explain and portray the situation of international students who study in foreign countries. The design of the research allows the researcher to collect information that gives real life experience of international students. This provides the researchers with adequate information that gives a wider understanding of the experiences of international students.
The study further allows for the researcher to work with a wide number of participants. However, it limits the researcher to only using data that is particular to international students. This was particularly important for the primary sources which required that the researches collect information only from the international student and the secondary data also had to be relevant to the study.
The design of the research required that the data analysis be done on the questionnaires and interviews which were to be used as the primary sources for the research. The analysis required that the researchers include percentages that indicate the experiences of student depending on different aspects of the research. The design of this research required that the researches protect the anonymity of the students. Hence, they ensured that while referring to the student’s they used a plural. The researchers also used percentages while indicating the feelings of a particular group. Using the case study design was the most suitable for this research since if aims at finding out experiences of a specific group of individual whose environment is also influences by other factors such as race and economic backgrounds.
References
Brown, L. (2008). Language and anxiety: An ethnographic study of international postgraduate
students. Evaluation & Research in Education, 21(2), 75.
Golafshani, N. (2003, December). Understanding reliability and validity in qualitative research.
The Qualitative Report, 8(4), 597.Harding, T., North, N., & Perkins, R. (2008). Sexualizing men's touch: Male nurses and the use
of intimate touch in clinical practice. Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, 22(2), 8.
