As a qualitative research this study will target data collection from various individuals that meet the criteria as discussed in this section. The study has targeted adequate amount of homogeneity in selecting the candidates that match the criteria of relative variables based on this study and there is an attempt to cover an effective population through randomized sampling. The sample of data collected for this study will include the persons who actually have participated in the study and will be called as participants for all further discussions.
Persons who have declined or not answered are not counted as belonging to the sample. The sample comprised 60/80 male patients in xyz clinic who have been associated with substance abuse related to category A/B/C as defined in the methodology section. All the participants are either taking a treatment at the time of conducting this study or have taken treatment from the clinic in the last two years. Out of the 80 questionnaires given to participants only 60 of them provided the answers and agreed to take part in the further process.
As far as the eligibility is concerned the first criteria was that the gender of the patient should be male and they should fall within the age group of sixteen to sixty years, anything beyond this age group is defined as beyond scope. The patients were then asked to provide if they had ever been treated for substance abuse in the last two years or if they are undergoing the treatment at the moment and have completed at least two weeks cycle. Lastly, it was discussed whether they will be willing to participate in a study like this and were explained about the anonymity that will be maintained by the researcher about the information collected during this time.
patients answered their questionnaires. The ages of the participants range from 16 to 35 years (Group 1) and 36 to 60 years (Group 2). Further information is provided in the table 3.1 below.
The researcher spent a total of ten (15) minutes to brief the patients’ participants on this information.
Material
For this study the researcher opted to collect qualitative data by means of face-to-face interview survey using the interview guide (appendix 2a & 2b). When dealing with the human experiences, qualitative research is the most suitable method that can be used. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyses words, reports detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting.
Solomon & Draine (2009) stated that, semi-structured interviews are amongst the commonly used methods of gathering data in qualitative research and well suited for the exploration of perceptions and opinions of respondents. Apart from this, the interviewer is able to note the interviewee’s non-verbal communication. However, the interviewer needs to keep in mind the risk of influencing the interviewee with non-verbal cues if the interviewer does not pay attention to his interview technique. This is usually referred to as interviewer bias.
Face to face contact with the researcher encourages participation and involvement. Apart from this, interviews allow collection of data from subjects unable or unlikely to complete questionnaires, which might be the case with target population involved in the study.
Procedure
The first stage of data collection was a small-scale pilot study. The main aim of this was to expose potential problems with the whole research process and environment. For the purpose of the study six surveys were enough since the research only comprised sixty participants and according to Solomon & Draine (2009), 10% of the sample is the appropriate number for the pilot study. Pilot study helped in assessing the adequacy, feasibility and functions of the data collection instrument, and identifies any need to modify it.
In this case no modifications needed to be done and one possible reason was that the interviews were done by the researcher and questions were explained. Apart from this, the pilot study confirmed the necessary time needed for the interview to be conducted and the researcher had the chance to familiarize himself with interview transcription. The manual technique of noting down interview responses was practiced so that the researcher is confident with regards to the documentation during the interviews. From the pilot testing themes were elicited.
Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with the use of some basic guide lines (appendix I). First of all the researcher had to explain the rationale of this research with full detail to all the participants who agreed to be a part of this research. The aim of the interview was to capture as much as possible information about what the subjects think about the particular topic. The questions in survey that were used were closed-ended as these were necessary to acquire objective data that permitted an quantitative analysis. First, the participants were asked in which language they preferred the survey to be conducted. Due to the fact that the surveys were immediately transcripted the researcher managed to get the exact identical replication of the contents of each interview, thus facilitating the analysis. Each participant was given a pseudo name.
References
Creswell, J. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, 3 edn. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Solomon, P., & Draine, J. (2009). An Overview of Quantitative Research Methods. In The Handbook of Social Work Research Methods. Chicago: Blackwell Publishers.
