This essay criticizes a research study that was conducted by Ovseiko, Oancea and Buchan (2012) on the impact of medical research studies on clinical medicine and the provision of healthcare services.
Qualitative research refers to an exploratory study that investigates or examines a particular research problem whereas quantitative research refers to a conclusive study that aims at collecting numerical data about a research phenomenon. Qualitative research usually aims at defining the research problem as well as finding an appropriate solution to the problem. It is descriptive in nature. On the other hand, an integrated research design refers to a study that combines techniques and methods from qualitative and quantitative research designs.
Benefits of an Integrated Research Design
In my opinion, many researchers usually combine qualitative and quantitative researches into one study in order to allow for easy integration of techniques and tools used for the collection of data and information during the research study. This results in a gathering of large amounts of high-quality data that are highly reliable and useful in exploring the research problem. Combining qualitative research and quantitative research during a study also helps in integrating concepts needed to conduct the study more efficiently. This leads to the generation of highly specialized skills and knowledge that is fundamental to solving the research problem.
Research Critique
The clinical problem that was reviewed by the research study is the impact of medical research in clinical medicine. In this study, the researchers aimed at establishing the effects of medical research on clinical medicine. In my view, the findings of this research would help in establishing how medical research studies can be used to improve the quality of healthcare services.
The authors established the significance of the study by emphasizing the importance of medical research studies on the improvement of clinical medicine and the provision of quality services. In my view, readers should care about this research study because it provides a comprehensive explanation of how medical research studies can be used to influence clinical medicine and the quality of health care. The authors further emphasize that medical studies often cost millions of shillings and thus should provide a reasonable contribution to the provision of healthcare services.
One of the research questions that were discussed in the research studies is how medical research studies have impacted clinical medicine and the provision of healthcare services. The study also reviewed whether or it is prudential to finance medical research studies. In my view, the purpose and research questions were related to the research problems. This is because the research questions acted as a guideline for conducting the research. Some of the qualitative research methods that were used during the research study include direction observations, focus groups and interviews. The authors also used quantitative research methods to obtain numerical data for testing the hypothesis of the study. Other forms of literature that were used during the study are reviews of previous research studies that were conducted to establish the importance of medical research in clinical medicine and the provision of healthcare services.
Although some of the references that were used in the research study are old, most of the references are current and adequately address the research topic. The authors also reviewed the weaknesses of the previous research studies and further stated that the basis of the study was grounded on the inability of previous studies to adequately address the research topic. The authors also used the literature review to provide a logical argument for their interests in further exploring the research topic. Moreover, the authors have succeeded in identifying a specific perspective from which the study was developed. In my opinion, his perspective is the need to establish whether or no medical research studies have reasonable impact on clinical medicine and the provision of quality healthcare services. However, the authors failed to develop a suitable framework from the findings of this research study.