Caretakers' Emotional Responses to Providing Care to Elderly Loved Essay

Caretakers' Emotional Responses to Providing Care to Elderly Loved Ones in Assisted Living Facilities - Essay Example ructured interviews allows for responses such as 'I started feeling a little resentful' (p10), an emotion which may not be typically associated with ailing relatives. There are fewer assumptions being placed on the data being collected, which leaves more room for hypothesis generation. Weaknesses of the Research by Sanderson & Meyers (2008) There are strengths, outlined above, of qualitative data that are applicable to this study. Correspondingly, there are weaknesses. Firstly, it can be hard to generate data and representations of this data for use in the published paper (Thorne, Kirkham & MacDonald-Emes, 1997). This can make it difficult for both readers and researchers to visualize the topic in a meaningful way (Carr, 1994). This lack of data also makes comparisons with other studies and individuals within the study more difficult, as the qualitative data collected is more difficult to graph. There are ways around this. One way to generate a more numeric version of the qualitative data is to use a technique called coding, which relies on giving mentioned words certain values and evaluating them in this way (Holloway & Wheeler, 2009). In the context of nursing, many heath bodies want results that can be applied in a meaningful way to the healthcare industry, and this can often be a challenge for qualitative data (Carr, 1994). Another issue with qualitative research that applies to this essay is that because of the complex nature of collecting data via interview or analysing long-answer responses to a questionnaire. This means that the sample size of qualitative studies is often far smaller than those in quantitative studies, making it harder to generalize the results to the population (Kuper et al, 2008). Sanderson & Meyers (2008) recognize this, and suggest that... This paper has primarily focused on the weaknesses of the study thus far. There are, however, many strengths as would be expected from a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. The paper clearly explains the aims of the research, and this is reflected in the succinct title and abstract. Generally, the paper achieves what it sets out to do, which is give detailed responses from those with relatives in assisted-living facilities to illustrates the difficulties of putting the elderly in care. The research design was appropriate for this, because they wished to get detailed responses, which could not have been gathered using a quantitative study. Sanderson & Mayer clearly understand the limitations of their study and incorporate this into their discussion, whilst forewarning about generalizability and making assumptions. The research also performs well ethically. The researchers recruited people from an event, and therefore the participants were well-versed on how the study would proceed and what their responses would be used for. In this sense, the paper succeeds in achieving its aims whilst behaving in an ethical manner. There is no clear indication of the relationship between the researcher and the participant but it can be assumed that this was anonymous, confidential and private from the description of the interview location