Purposes and Methods of Research

Authors Avatar by fazilla (student)

Gurpreet Kumar        Health & Social Care A2 Level: Research Methods        Miss D Cousineau

AO1: Purposes and Methods of Research

In this assignment, I will define what is meant by research and the different types of the common researches that are used around us in many ways. ‘Research is defined as investigating an issue or a subject in a systematic way. To research something it is very handy when this will help with the sources and the study of materials in order to create new facts and the reach to the new conclusions’ (ref:  ). There are different types of researches are: Medical Research, Psychological Research, Health Research and Sociological Research.  

Describe the following types of researches

Teenagers who are in education often think that research is to do with figuring out something in the internet that it would be related to their subject and good for their general knowledge. Qualified, matured and professional adults hear the word research, they would think what sort of research and why do they need to look for it. This is because there are different types of researches, the most common ones are: Medical Research; Psychological Research; Health Research; Sociological Research.

Medical Research is used for the doctors and the medical researcher to find out predictions of whether a medication or a treatment is working or not. There are two categories of medical research and those are: Clinical Trails, this is for the evaluations of new treatments for the safety and the effectiveness of them when used on volunteers. The other category is the development of the new treatment after it is carried out on volunteers. Medical research can be used in public health, surgery, and serious illnesses.

For example, in surgeries, doing medical researching could be a bit difficult because first you have to find patients who has the disease or illness that needs to be treated. Then you have to take into account their height, weight, what their diet is like, whether they do any exercises, are they in stress and all sorts of questions. Based on these questions, if the doctors think that the patient is the correct healthy patient but with the symptoms they want and then they could start their surgery. After the surgery, the surgical doctors should be looking forward to see what sort of symptoms could the patient is facing and if the wounds are healing or not. If the operation was successful then the doctor can see people who have other illnesses that also be cured, along with the new treatment that they have established, as they should be aware of their biomedical sciences and give the right treatment.

For instance, people usually think that medical research is used for public health, like cold and flu. This is true as we all have recently heard about the swine flu, which came from abroad and was spread in the UK. The medical researcher researches the side effects of people who have swine flu and they try to make swine flu jabs that will destroy the swine flu. Then after their research and investigation of the swine flu, they discover different sorts of swine flu jabs. These flu jabs are first checked on animals whether the jab had worked, this is meant to be continued on for few of months. During this process, medical researchers are using animals as a part of research to see whether the effect of the injection has started or not. Along the side of the effectiveness of the injections it is important to know if the animals had any side effects or not. After they had checked it on animals, they would use the same jab for humans (volunteers) they would use the same process for them too. Depending on the participant’s genetics and health issues, then the swine flu jab will work. The medical researcher should give strict instructions to all GP surgeries how the patient should be, what they should do when if they have side effects of them. It is important that the GP and the NHS advisors should be giving them full detailed advice about the swine flu injections.

The main advantage of the medical research is that it’s a new treatment. The new treatment being investigated which the medical researcher cannot be positive and/or give confidence to the family whether everything will be alright. The new treatments are made when the previous one is not working well for the patient or there’s a side effect of the other one which means the treatment needs to have improvement. So according to the patient’s condition there will have to be a new treatment which should be better than the previous one. Before any treatment is done it is necessary that some trails are done. This means that people who want do this treatment knowing that they can put their lives in risk. These volunteers do their treatment first and receive money from the NHS, this is when they have signed the contract by agreeing all the terms and conditions that are written on it. This means that they have the authority to do their treatment first, so with these trails the doctors can find out whether the treat is successful or not.

Another advantage could be that usually people complain about their treatment because they get worried that their wounds are not healing, their doctors are not doing anything and so on. As this is a new treatment, most of the medical practitioners would look at the patient treatment and progress, some university students studying medicine, biomedical science and the doctor’s degree they would look at the new treatment and the medical research too. As usual treatments when the treatment is finished, health and medical professionals offer the patient the most appropriate and effective treatment. As this is a new treatment, the professional will keep a strict record of the how the patient is, so they can get to know even more if the operation is still a success at the moment. In the usual treatment, they see the patients after one or two months in their normal ward depending on how serious the matter is. However, when it’s a new treatment the doctors have made appointments in the early morning or late evenings after one to three weeks. These appointments are not made depending on how serious or what the condition of the participant is, because all different sort of new treatment counts more serious than for all sorts of usual treatments.  

The disadvantages of the medical research for the new treatment are many, because the doctors are not sure what the outcome could be. This is the reason why participants may think not to do the treatment as their lives could be in risk. Some new treatments may have been given but they may not be effective, this means that the new treatment is meant to be better than the previous one but in some cases that may not work. There are chances of having new and inexperienced side effects of this new treatment, this means that it is necessary to visit the doctors and see if there are any side effects that are happening that the participant may not be aware of. It is important that they should get some time out from personal and professional life, and being bothered of taking care about their own lives. This means that when they are visiting and attending the appointments from the doctors, surgical doctors, nurses, physiotherapist to see how their treatment has been and have they been monitored as well.

Another disadvantage could be that medical research could be expensive. This is because they have to pay the patient who is ready to take the risk of having a treatment, and the health care providers as well. The medical trails are happening more than once to see if the treatment is effective or not. This means that it’s all dependent on the medical equipment, medical treatments, medical areas, and medicines itself. Medicines are drugs this means that they do affect the individuals brain and other organs in the body in good ways and bad ways.  There might be a need of different medicines because there might be a need of a different affect as the individual has different genes. There might be a need of different treatments like X-rays, MRI-rays, and so on, because they might be needed anytime to analyse to see where things are going at the moment and what changes may need to be made. The treatments are more expensive than most expensive medicines that would cost. Overall doing a treatment that is never done before would cost over a grand, this means that the sergeant may have to use his savings in order to do that. It is important to check the sergeant’s qualification, experience of doctor, and they amount of money they have in order to take this risk, this is because if anything goes wrong they would have sold proof to say that the sergeant is innocent.

Bibliography and references of medical research:

  •  
  •  

Psychological Research is a research done by psychologist. These psychologists research and analyse the experiences and behaviours of individuals from groups, by their using main methods. Their main methods are: experiments, observational techniques, correlation techniques, case studies and self report techniques, like questionnaires and interviews. The psychological research is about education, occupational and clinical application of individuals or groups.

In psychological research, to do the experimental method it’s important that the psychologist starts of investigating about the first or one of the variables that exists. There can be changes in the variables and they could also be measured like their age, weight, response time, reading and the intelligent scores. It is important that the psychologist keeps the three key features of the experimental method in mind, they are:

  1. The psychologist should be able to understand the independent variable to see if there are changes in the dependent variables. For example, in a crime case, their first object they have found is a knife with blood on it from a college. It is important to figure out whose finger prints are on it and get every students finger prints checked for this investigation.
  2. The dependent variables could be controlled, kept or out of the investigation according to the results figured out at the first investigation. For example, according to their investigation of the finger prints there are no one’s finger prints matching up with it. But they are bearing in mind about students who are missing from college so they could get their finger prints done.
  3. The participants who have taken part of the experimental method will need to stay with it, so they know who has made the changes and why. For example, once the person is found whose finger prints were on the knife and they start investigating why the criminal killed the person.
Join now!

The advantages of the experimental method are that the research is done directly, which means that it follows one route which may be long otherwise there are more complications during the process. Depending on what the research is about, it gets difficult to figure out the result of it when there are participants involved in it, because they might change their behaviour and thoughts about reason they are involved in. With the use of the experiments the psychologists can quickly speed up with their research because they don’t have to wait to investigate a certain issue. The psychologist can study ...

This is a preview of the whole essay