Critique of a qualitative article Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Critique of a qualitative article - Essay Example Her contribution in field of research has enable her receive numerous awards such as the Eastern Nursing Research Society’s Distinguished Researcher Award, the Connecticut Nurse’ Association’s Diamond Jubilee award and many others. For the past 20 years, Cheryl main area of research has been on efforts to develop a research program on postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. Based on findings from the numerous studies she has undertaken, she has developed the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS) which has been and continues to be published by Western Psychological Services. â€Å"There is no escaping the reality for Mothers of Children with Obstetric Brachial Plexus injuries† is one of the papers written by Cheryl after extensive research on mothers experiencing care for their children with an OBPI. The site of the study was the United States of America and a total of 23 mothers of children with OBPIs were used for the study. Research on mothers expe riencing care for their children with an OBPI by Cheryl is a phenomenology research. This is because it involves small number of samples and is basically concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of conscience and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness. Shoulder dystocia is considered the obstetric nightmare and some likely complication of shoulder dystocia to the infant is obstetric brachial plexus injury (OBPI). Generally, 20% to 30% of infants with OBPI are characterized by residual functional deficits (Beck, 2004). The main objective of the study was to investigate mothers’ experiences caring for their children who have obstetric brachial plexus injury (OBPI) (Beck, 2004). The purpose of the study is practical because Cheryl focuses on mothers who had experience caring for children suffering from obstetric brachial plexus injury. The study states that the recent countrywide study in the USA, the reported mean and standard error of OBPI incidence was 1.51+-0.02 per 1000 live births. It is worth noting that the statistics is based 1997, 2000 and 2003 data on more than 11 million births in Inpatient database (Beck, 2004. The sample size of the study comprised of 23 mothers from the USA who had children suffering from OBPI. The mother’s age ranged from 25 to 47 years while that of their children ranged from 3 months to 10 years. Of the 23 women selected for the study, 1 was single, 3 were divorced and 19 were married (Beck, 2004). In terms of ethnicity; 1 each was Hispanic, Black and Asian while 18 were Caucasian. However, 2 of the women did not reveal their ethnic background. In terms of education, 2 of the women had high school diplomas, 3 reported partial colleges, 3 had associate degrees, 7 had bachelor’s degrees, and 4 had master’s degree while 2 attained doctoral degree. However, two of the participants did not reveal their level of education (Beck, 2004). Two methods was used to colle ct data-the Internet and in-person interviews. This followed an approval from the university’s institutional review board. There was quite a long period of time for data collection starting from October 2005 to December 2007. Because of the in-person interviews, the data collection method was partly a field study since it involved the researcher going to the camp to collect data (Beck, 2004). The researcher played a vital role in ensuring validity of the data through going out to the field and having first-hand information from those families who had