NURS 8201 Week 10 Qualitative Research Approaches to Support Nursing Practice
Childhood obesity is one of the issues that parents, researchers, and health care institutions have been facing for the longest time in history. The increase in the rate of childhood obesity in the recent past has been calling for more stringent measures that can aid in curbing the menace among children. The qualitative research approach to the topic has been giving essential insights that would assist in finding data that can lead to the practical solution of the problem among children (Quinn & Fantasia, 2018). The purpose of this paper is to address the significance of focus groups in the qualitative research approach to childhood obesity.
Childhood obesity is a multifaceted problem that keeps on changing with time. This variation implies that empirical studies done by authors in the last five or ten years cannot be effective in solving the current problem of childhood obesity (Quinn & Fantasia, 2018). The nature of the problem calls for new research studies that would use the current data in examining the problem in real-time. Therefore, conducting focus group discussions with parents of obese children would be important in developing a new line of practice that solves the current problem.
A Focus group is a qualitative research approach with ten or fewer individuals who converge in a room to discuss an issue. The groups aim at finding out different attitudes, responses, and experiences about the topic of discussion. The group can either react or discuss various survey questions to share their opinions (Maddison & Strang, 2018). The deep insights provided by the participants through their body language also play an important role in examining the problem. These groups act as a rich source of information based on the experience and the current feeling and what they might be undergoing concerning childhood obesity.
Focus group discussion would be effective in analyzing the topic. The focus groups consist of participants with simila
r traits. The group encourages each participant to talk and discuss the topic effectively (Glerean et al., 2019). The evaluation of the interaction between the participants is effective through a group setting as compared to the traditional one-on-one interview with the participants. Applying the focus group design in collecting data on childhood obesity would give more detailed and complex responses that researchers cannot achieve through the traditional interview method.
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The focus group design allows participants to connect the meaning of sharing information and experiences that might be missed using a different design. This approach would allow the research to examine the respondents’ feelings and the journey that many parents have been going through to maintain their children’s health. Besides, the focus groups would as well aid the researcher in collecting data on the current behaviors of parents that might have been leading to childhood obesity (Glerean et al., 2019). The data collected from this design would be important in developing a practice that parents could adopt in examining their children’s diet and reducing their risks of becoming obese.
DNP nurses need to understand the qualitative research approach for nursing practice as it forms one of the reaches sources of health information in health care. The information provided by the participants in a discussion allows the nurses to understand the perception of the participants on the topic and examine various causes of the issue discussed (Maddison & Strang, 2018). The need for improvement and practices to solve a nursing problem stems from the quality of data collected from the respondents.
Conclusion
The qualitative research approach is effective in examining the attitudes and feelings of the respondents on the topic of discussion. The focus groups allow the researchers to analyze each participant’s attitude on the problem and record their opinions on the measures they have been taking to solve the problem in the past. Therefore, focus group discussion allows researchers to to collect quality information that aids in a study.
References
Glerean, N., Hupli, M., Talman, K., & Haavisto, E. (2019). Perception of nursing profession–focus group interview among applicants to nursing education. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 33(2), 390-399. https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.12635
Maddison, C., & Strang, G. (2018). Do action learning sets facilitate collaborative, deliberative learning?: a focus group evaluation of graduate entry pre-registration nursing (GEN) students’ experience. Nurse education in practice, 28, 285-291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2017.10.023
Quinn, B. L., & Fantasia, H. C. (2018). Forming focus groups for pediatric pain research in nursing: a review of methods. Pain Management Nursing, 19(3), 303-312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2017.07.002