Qualitative research design
According to (Shields & Twycross, 2013) qualitative research is a method of inquiry that
helps in finding the way people think and feel, it focusses more on the social and human science.
It is exploratory and is always process oriented. It is used to gain an understanding of underlying
reasons and opinions. It is used to develop a hypothesis for potential quantitative research.
Another characteristic is that qualitative research uses data collection methods that entail the
unstructured and semi-structured ones. Some of the commonly used data collection methods are
focus group discussion, participant observation and key informant interviews. The participants
who are selected for the research are usually small, and they are always chosen to fulfil a given
quota.
Qualitative research has its strength especially in informing the nursing practice in that it
looks at the context and the social meaning and how it affects an individual who is very useful in
identifying the impact of certain characters on the wellbeing of the patients. Secondly,
qualitative research provides more detailed and rich data in the form of comprehensive written
description or pictorial evidence (Shields & Twycross, 2013). Some of the weaknesses of using
qualitative research in informing the nursing practice are that it is timing consuming, and it can
last for several years before the results are put into the practices. Secondly, the research
integrates the results and the findings depending on their understanding, which can result in the
biases, which cause the skewing of the data collected.
The purpose of the qualitative research was to factors that influenced the attitude towards
participation in a lung cancer screening program (Patel et al., 2011). The designer used is a
qualitative study design which is appropriate for the study because of the factors under the,
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which are non-numerical. The ethical issues in the research study concerned the use of the sick
people who were smokers to be partakers of the study. The ethics were upheld by obtaining
consent from the patients by the nurse after educating the patients on the importance of
participation. Besides, ethics approval was provided by the South West London Multi Research
Ethics Committee.
According to (Patel et al., 2011), three groups of respondents were identified using the
purposive sampling technique. The three groups were trial participants who would give a sputum
sample yearly. The second respondents were trial participants who had already given their
sputum sample, and the results of cytology showed the presence of dysplastic cells and had been
attending the annual bronchoscopy. The third group were participants who declined the trial.
Participants were recruited using the primary and secondary sources using the hospital records
and the outpatient attendance list. The sampling and recruitment strategies were appropriate for
the study because it gave the required sample unit.
The thematic analysis was carried out using the framework approach. An iterative
process was used, which influenced the further on data collection, which allowed for more
themes that can be studied in future interviews to emerge. The transcripts were coded separately
by two researchers, and the spreadsheets were used to chat the data. The analysis methods used
were appropriate for the study.
The criteria that are used in judging the rigour of qualitative research are dependability,
transferability, credibility and conformability. The research study result is dependable, credible
and confirmable but is not transferable because there were a limited number of ethnic minorities
among the respondents. Most respondents viewed CT scanning, sputum provision and
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bronchoscopy as most acceptable. The participants who declined the trial described their tension
on bronchoscopy, problems of travelling to and fro the hospital for screening and others had a
perception that they have low chances of acquiring lung cancer and others said that they were too
elderly to benefit from the screening (Patel et al., 2011). There were a small number of
respondents in work and a partial number of patients from the ethnic minority.
Quantitative research design
Quantitative research is used to identify the problems in a way in which the numerical
data are generated or data that can be transformed into useable statistics. It uses quantitative data
collection methods, such as systematic observation and website interceptors. According to
(Shields & Twycross, 2013) observational study design is always retrospective in nature and are
used to assess the causal factor exposed concerning the exposure-outcome. Such designs include
cross-sectional, case study, ecological and case-control studies. On the other hand, the
interventional study design is prospective designs that assess the direct effect of a particular
treatment or preventive measure on a specific disease.
A true experiment is whereby the participants of a particular study are assigned randomly
to a treatment method or a control group, whereas in quasi-experiment, the participants are not
assigned to the treatment randomly. Descriptive statistics aims at describing the data obtained
from a specific sample while inferential statistics uses the data collected from the sample to
make inferences about the entire or the large group, it is used to generalize the larger group.
The study is a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of chemotherapy plus best
supportive care versus supportive care in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. The study
aims to evaluate the effects of chemotherapy plus best supportive care versus the best supportive
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care alone on the survival of patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Blinding is the process of
hiding certain information from the study participants, which may influence them, thus affecting
the results (Shields & Twycross, 2013). Randomization is the random assignment of treatment to
help reduce biases in the experiment. The ethical issues involved were retrieving and handling
data from different sources and not individuals. The ethical issues were not addressed.
The study is a meta-analysis, and the sample was selected from the Medline and EmBase
with relevant information and medical subject headings that entailed the spelling of non-small
lung cancer, chemotherapy, randomized control trial, English and humans (A Meta-Analysis of
Randomized Controlled Trials, 2013, March 13). The references were screened independently by
two authors to evaluate their eligibility of being used in the meta-analysis. A third party settled
any disparities between the two authors.
The data were collected by recording the trials, the details of the treatment administered
and the outcome by the two authors. Any dispute from the two researchers was settled in a group
discussion. The data were retrieved depending on the interventions, characteristics of the patients
and the characteristics of the methods used. Jadad score was used in the assessment of the
study’s quality primarily on the blinding, randomization, hiding of the treatment assignment and
comprehensiveness of follow up. Validity refers to the survey is measuring what it claims to be
measuring, while reliability refers to the consistency of the results obtained from a study. The
validity and reliability of instruments were not discussed in this study.
The effect of chemotherapy was analyzed using the risk ratios and the hazard ration with
the respective confidence intervals. The log hazards ratios, together with the respective variance,
were estimated using the Parmar proposal method primarily when the confidence intervals and
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the hazard ratios were being reported. The adverse effects of the chemotherapy were analyzed as
WHO grades three or more. The derivation of all the estimated effects was done using the
random effects model. STATA software was used to calculate all the analyses. According to (A
Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. (2013, March 13) The use of chemotherapy
plus BSC in treatment produced a statistically significant benefit in OS as compared with BSC
alone. Gemcitabine therapy did not affect the OS compared to the use of primary support care
(HR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.57-1.09). The limitation of this study is that there is a small number of
trials, making it unreliable.
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References
Chemotherapy Plus Best Supportive Care Versus Best Supportive Care in Patients with Non-
Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. (2013,
March 13). Retrieved from
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0058466#abstract0
Patel, D., Akporobaro, A., Chinyanganya, N., Hackshaw, A., Seale, C., Spiro, S. G., &
Griffiths, C. (2011). Attitudes to participation in a lung cancer screening trial: a
qualitative study. Thorax, 67(5), 418-425. doi:10.1136/thoraxjnl-2011-200055
Shields, L., & Twycross, A., (2013). The difference between quantitative and qualitative
research. Paediatric Nursing, 15(9), 24-24. doi:10.7748/paed.15.9.24.s25
