Childhood Obesity - Research Proposal Example

? School: Topic: Research Proposal Methods Lecturer: Research Proposal Methods Introduction This portion of the research proposal is dedicated to making known the procedures and methods that will be employed in the collection of primary data relevant for the study. As a mixed research, the researcher will rely greatly on primary data to ensure that the research objectives that have been set to be achieved. The research proposal methods, therefore, outline the various strategies and activities that the researcher is going to employ to collect primary data. The chapter shall, therefore, be made up of the research procedure, research design, participants, instrumentation, data collection plan, and later data analysis plan. Research Procedure The researcher proposes the use of mixed research method for the research problem identified. Mixed research method involves the combined use of qualitative and quantitative methods in a single research work. Mixed methods are often necessitated by a number of conditions and factors. In the proposed study, the nature and construction of research problem makes it very ideal for the use of a mixed research method. This is because by seeking to manage obesity in children by use of home based remedies, it will be necessary to use both qualitative and quantitative strategies and procedures. Qualitative research has been explained as the time of research method that does not involve the use of any numeric indexes in the collection and analysis of data (Rasmussen et al, 2009). With the research problem at hand, qualitative method will be used in the conduct of secondary data collection and other data collection procedures that do not involve the use of non-numeric indexes in their presentation. Some of these qualitative data could be pointed to as the review of literature on academic facts and figures on the management of obesity in children. Quantitative research, on the other hand, has been explained to be a research method that involves the use of numeric indexes by way of undertaking quantum measure of variables (Vrijling, Hengel & Houben, 2005). In the proposed study, using quantum measure is almost inevitable, given the background that obesity is a relative term, involving quantitative variables such as weight, height, age, gender and eating pattern. Generally, combining qualitative method with quantitative method as it prevails in this context would ensure that there is much assurance with internal validity because there will be virtually no lapses for the measurement of variables. This means that where quantitative designs may not be appropriate for data collection, qualitative designs would rightly complement it (Rasmussen et al, 2009). It must, however, be stated that in relation to the research design, which shall be discussed later, greater part of the research method is going to be based on quantitative method; especially for the primary data collection. Participants This section of the research comprises of two major groups of people namely population and sample size. Generally, the population refers to all people within a given research field or setting from whom there is a likelihood that the researcher shall include directly in the data collection process (Vrijling, Hengel & Houben, 2005). The other group of people is the sample size, which is made up of the actual people from whom the researcher shall collect data from. In the context of the proposed study, the population shall be made up of parents of students from an identified elementary school. It is expected that this population will be made up of an estimated one hundred and twenty (120) mothers. Mothers are chosen over fathers for a preference of parents because of the direct role that mothers play in issues of diet and feeding at home. Out of the population of one hundred and twenty (120) people within the population, the researcher is going to use an estimated 20 mothers in the sample size. Due to the nature of the study, which requires children with obesity or over weight, the researcher would have to use a purposive sampling technique in the selection of the sample size to ensure that the sample size includes only mothers whose children come under the said variable. Research Design The research design is made up of a series of specific approaches or strategies that are going to be used to ensure that the researcher achieves the research aim (Roscoe, 2005). In the proposed study, the researcher is going make use of action research design. Action research is a type of research design in which the researcher identifies a problem within an immediate environment and attempts to solve it, using a coordinated effort of affected people (Salkind, 2009). In the context of the proposed research problem, the identified problem is obesity whiles the setting is children in elementary school. Moreover, the affected people in the immediate environment with whom the researcher is going to attempt to attain the intended change are parents of the obese children. As part of the process to go about the action research, the researcher shall have three major phases, namely pre-intervention stage, intervention stage, and post-intervention stage. The intervention refers to the series of activities that the researcher will put in place to solve the identified problem. In this context, it is home based remedies to obesity. Pre-intervention, therefore, refers to that stage of the researcher where the researcher shall measure the gravity of the problem at hand. The intervention phase will be where the researcher shall implement the management principles and the post-intervention stage shall be used to measure the degree of success or otherwise of the intervention. Instrumentation and Data Collection Plans The research instrument is a set of tools with which the researcher is going to collect responses from the respondents. The researcher is going to use an interview guide for the purpose of collecting data from respondents. The interview is going to be a one-on-one question and answer session where the researcher is going to ask all respondents the same set of questions based on the interview guide. The interview guide is basically going to be an expanded version of the research questions and the research objectives. The advantage of using an interview in action research of this nature is that it offers the researcher to collect data in an atmosphere of friendliness and social integration. The reason this is necessary for the proposed research is that there is the tendency that most parents will feel uncomfortable sharing issues that has to do with the health of their children if the atmosphere is not made to be one of cordial and informal. It must be stressed, however, that the use of interview could be highly time-consuming as the researcher will have to attend to each respondent at a different time frame. During the interview, the researcher shall schedule a one-on-one meeting with each parent at the school head’s office. Each of these sessions is expected to last for 20 minutes. Special dispensation shall, however, be given for telephone interview in cases where parents prove on genuine grounds that they cannot be present for the interview. Analysis of the Data In relation to the research objectives, the researcher shall be making use of five major variables in the analysis of the data to be collected. These variables are enumerated below: 1. Relationship between age and obesity 2. Relationship between gender and obesity 3. Relationship between diet pattern and obesity 4. Relationship between physical exercise and obesity In relation to the literature review that was conducted, it is expected that there will be more female students with obesity as against male students. It is also expected that students who just experienced the onset of puberty would be more than those who have not experienced puberty yet. What is more, the researcher envisions that when a routine physical exercise and scheduled diet are used, the weight of obese children will reduce to medically accepted scales. Based on the hypotheses which draw a direct relationship between the home-based management principles to the weight of the children, it can be said that the variables being measured are changes in eating attitude and physical exercise as the dependent variables and body mass index as the independent variable. To get a better statistical and quantitative relationship between the variables listed above, the researcher shall employ the use of statistical software namely SPSS. With the use of this software the reliability of the analysis is going to be improved because the results that are going to be given are going to be based on universally accepted parameters and statistical premises. As far as validity of the results is concerned, much is going to depend on the fairness and unbiased nature of the data collection exercise (Humphrey, 2001). To this end, the researcher is going to ensure that no preferential treatment is given to any of the members of the sample size during the data collection exercise. Moreover, all situations that may result in respondents giving false data are going to be identified and blocked. References List Humphrey, W. S. (2001). Managing the Country Process. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Inc. Rasmussen, J. M., I. et al (1987). Screening for complement deficiencies in unselected patients with meningitis. Clinical Experimental Immunology. 68:437-445. Roscoe, J. T. (2005). Fundamental research statistics for the behavioural sciences. 2nd ed. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston. Salkind, N. J. (2009). Exploring research (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Vrijling, J.K., Hengel, W.V. & Houben R.J. (2005). A framework for risk evaluation. Journal of Hazardous Materials, Vol. 43(3), pp. 245-261. Read More