A qualitative research design was chosen for this study. The benefits of this design in family therapy are demonstrated by the more personal approach of the study. Qualitative research is a naturalistic inquiry that aims to learn more about social phenomena in their natural environment. It focuses on the “why” of social phenomena rather than the “what,” and it is based on people’s actual experiences as meaning-makers in their daily lives. For the study of human phenomena, qualitative researchers utilize various methods of inquiry, including biography, case study, historical analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology, rather than logical and statistical approaches.
The age group from 5 to 16 was selected for this study; moreover, participants are expected to be males and females. The study also includes a multicultural approach, involving communication with representatives of different races and ethnic groups. In terms of demographics, residents of densely populated urban areas were selected. The data of the study participants will be collected from specialized organizations. The latter include such organizations as CHADD, ADDA.
Moreover, for social and research ethics purposes, immediate relatives of children with ADHD will be interviewed (Buningh, 2021). The Children and Adults with ADHD (CHADD) organization were created in response to the frustration that parents and their children with ADHD felt (CHADD, 2022). The Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA) is the world’s premier adult ADHD organization, created over thirty years ago to assist children with ADHD in leading more fulfilling lives (Attention Deficit Disorder Association, n.d.). Therefore, these organizations will help collect the necessary data on the target group due to their profile.
This study will use categorical variables based on flexibility and convenience for a given research design. A categorical variable is a discrete variable that captures qualitative consequences by grouping observations or levels. The groups are mutually exclusive, implying that each person may only belong to one of them. For this study, the primary variables are age, ethnicity, culture, and social background: society, family, community around surveyed children with ADHD.
Next, it will be investigated whether the children of the different groups received any pharmacological or non-pharmacological interventions. The data about the treatment would be divided into three groups: no intervention, pharmacological intervention, and non-pharmacological intervention. Next, the interventions would be evaluated according to their effectiveness, which would be known by comparing medical information about children and their families experiences. The age, gender, and other categorical numbers would be measured using nominal scales to identify the groups; the categories of interventions would be measured in the same manner. However, the effectiveness of interventions would be ordinal; namely, the codes from 1 to 5 would represent a person’s response to a question regarding the help of the chosen treatment to their child.
Data for qualitative investigations can be collected in a variety of methods. These are determined by the questions the researcher is attempting to answer and the study’s viability in terms of time and money. In-depth interviews, in which a researcher asks questions of a person or group touched by a topic, are one technique of qualitative assessment. In this study, the method of interviewing subjects will be used. Modern designs will compose a transcript and organize and structure the received data. These include, first of all, the use of audio recording equipment and the text format of the interview using social networks.
There are a variety of approaches for analyzing qualitative data that may be employed in this study, but most of them follow a similar analytical procedure. Because qualitative data is commonly written, a massive amount of information is typically gathered. As a result, researchers must go through a data reduction or data cleaning procedure to put their data into a usable format. Charts and graphs may be useful for organizing data and making it accessible for quick reference. Researchers examine the data for patterns and compare them to the research questions set at the start of the project. This is a rigorous procedure, and including numerous researchers helps to improve the validity of the qualitative analysis. Researchers must be willing to accept findings that contradict their initial hypotheses or expectations in qualitative research.
Given the design and general format of the study, namely interviewing subjects, the main ethical issue will be voluntary participation. However, possible refusal or problems of volunteers during the study are solved. In this case, the solution will be the experience of such interviews within research ethics. All research subjects have the option to engage voluntarily, without any pressure or compulsion (Facca et al., 2020). Participants are free to leave or withdraw from the research without feeling obligated to do so. Subjects do not need to give a reason for leaving the study. It is critical to make participants aware that refusing to engage has no adverse effects or ramifications. After all, they are spending the time to assist research, so researcher should respect their decisions and refrain from attempting to persuade them otherwise.
In the legal field, important issues related to the research participants can become problems. The primary purpose of human volunteers in research is to provide data. Researchers are responsible for safeguarding the life, health, dignity, integrity, right to self-determination, privacy, and confidentiality of study subjects’ personal information. During the research, for evaluating work researcher must use three ethical principles. First, there is respect for people, which entails acknowledging autonomy and safeguarding those who lack it. The second principle is beneficence: first and foremost, not harm, maximize potential benefits and minimize possible evils. The last matter in research is justice – on an individual and societal level.
There are also multicultural issues of the research to consider. The main problem of the study concerning this aspect might be designing the questionnaire for all the participants that would regard all their cultural peculiarities. The questions and behavioral norms would be made in a way that all the participants of the research are respected as personalities. Moreover, the questionnaire would be constructed so that to receive the most precise answers that would provide better data for the study.
Several personal biases may impact the study and corroborate the results. As such, the fatigue of the interviewers can influence the manner of their communication with the families of children with ADHD. The interviewees can be reluctant to share personal information in these cases and undermine the procedure. Moreover, interviewers with medical knowledge might have a bias towards non-pharmacological and non-conventional treatments. Their reaction could be observed by the participants who might become disinclined towards the further questions. Finally, there might be unclear formulations in the questionnaire that the researchers conceive as understandable while multicultural target groups do not.
References
Attention Deficit Disorder Association. (n.d.). About ADDA – ADDA – Attention Deficit Disorder Association. ADDA – Attention Deficit Disorder Association.
Buningh, S. (2021). CHADD honors exceptional contributions to the ADHD community. CHADD. Web.
CHADD. (2022). About. Web.
Facca, D., Smith, M. J., Shelley, J., Lizotte, D., & Donelle, L. (2020). Exploring the ethical issues in research using digital data collection strategies with minors: A scoping review. PLOS ONE, 15(8), e0237875. Web.