Questionnaires
Advantages
The advantages of questionnaires are that they can provide you with the data you are looking for. They are also easy to fill and use. They can also be easily evaluated and analysed after they have been filled in.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages for this type of research are when filling out the questionnaire people may not always be truthful and honest. This could lead to the data provided being false and invalid.
Diaries
Advantages
The advantages of writing a diary regarding your research will be the information provided by the researcher will be true and real life events would be written and the researcher will also provide their views and opinions on the issues.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages will be that the research provided by the researcher in the diary will be biased as everyone has different views on different things. The information provided will be biased because it will be from one point of view which is the researcher’s point of view. The researcher will only write his opinion and views, this will be unfair on others because they may not agree with the researchers opinions and may have different views on the issues.
Interviews
Advantages
The advantages of this research are you can ask questions to the person you are interviewing there and then. This will provide you with the information you are looking for and will be reliable.
Disadvantages
The person you are interviewing may not know the answer or may not want to answer it correctly and therefore give you wrong false answers. This could result in the data being false and inaccurate.
Research
These are some of the research methods in health and social care settings. I will now use some of these methods to do my research on different health related topics such as smoking, obesity and alcohol intake. The reason why I have chose to do my research on an health topic is because I want to see which factors there are that can affect an individuals health and want to find out which one of these factors is most common within the society. After researching these health factors I will then pick one health issue on which I will base my hypothesis on. I am going to find out this information by researching these health issues. To start with I will research on obesity.
Secondary research
Obesity research
This table shows the intake of both fruit and vegetables by the population in the U.K.
Looking at the social trends the department of health suggests that everyone should at least eat 5 portions of fruit or vegetables each day excluding potatoes to keep a healthy diet. Increased intake of fruit and vegetables is associated with decreasing the risk of developing various diseases. Below I have added a table which shows that in 2006 only, 19 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women met this target in England, while 12 per cent of men and 8 per cent of women ate none at all.
Again researching further on this issue to make sure my results were correct. I found a graph showing adults and children who are obese or overweight. Research shows that men are unhealthier than women. This research also shows that younger girls and boys are much healthier than both men and females, but each year all obese and overweight results are increasing gradually for all genders.
