Question

1. State your research topic. This is the broad umbrella under which your research question will fall. For example: Cancer care at end of life 2. Literature review. Provide a brief review of the literature (2-3 paragraphs) that leads the reader to your research question. Cite a few articles that introduce your topic. Then narrow your focus. For example, “Smith (2018), Jones (2017) and others have examined the frequency of chemotherapy use in the last 4 weeks of life, but to date, little work has been done on rationales physicians use for prescribing late chemotherapy. 3. Research question: State your research question; the question you are trying to answer. Example: What rationales do oncologists offer for prescribing late chemotherapy to end stage cancer patients? 4. Research methods: Describe the qualitative research method you will use – face to face interviews, phone interviews, open ended questions on a survey, focus groups, etc. How will you collect the data? (Record it, take notes, etc.) Who will you interview? Describe the criteria you will use to recruit participants and how you will recruit them. This section should explain to the reader in detail how you are conducting the study. 5. Questions for participants. Identify 5 questions you will ask your participants that are aimed at answering your research question. Remember that sometimes participants cannot answer directly. For example, in my research, oncologists generally had difficulty answering the question: Why do you give late chemotherapy to patients? So, I had to ask other questions, such as “Tell me about a time when you regretted prescribing chemotherapy to someone near death. Or: Have you ever prescribed chemotherapy to someone even when you didn’t think it was a good idea? Tell me about that? Or: What parts of your job do you find the most difficult, emotionally?

I need assistance formulating a qualitative research question pertinent to healthcare. Possible examples included. If anyone could assist with this I would greatly appreciate. Thank you.

Answer 1

Some possible qualitative research questions pertinent to healthcare :

• Experiences of family members of a child with mental illness.
• Women's experiences with menopause (case study approach)
• Resilience and optimism in COVID-19 patients.
• Elderly diagnosed with dementia and their experience with pain.
• Mental health issues of prisoners.
• Peer support intervention : way to prevent suicide among teens

Above are some of the research questions that can be asked and qualitative methodology can be used to answer these questions. Methods that can be used are:

Interview based - structured, semi-structured, open ended, video or telephonic, focus groups etc.

Writeup can also be used as a form of secondary source of data - autobiographies, testimonies, biographies, adaptations in various art forms etc.