Clinical Research Methods

Question 1

What are the main standards that professionals must demonstrate in order to remain registered with the HCPC?

Answer 1

1. Character
2. Health
3. Standards of proficiency
4. Standards of conduct, performance and ethics
5. Standards for continuing professional development
6. Standards of education and training
7. Standards of prescribing

Question 2

What must a professional registered with the HCPC do to k maintain/prove the character standard?

Answer 2

Registrants must provide a credible character reference from people who have known them for at least 3 years.

The standard also considers any criminal cautions or convictions.

Question 3

What must a professional registered with the HCPC do to k maintain/prove the health standard?

Answer 3

Provide information every 2 years when they reregister about their general health.

If professionals feel at any point that their health is impairing their ability to practice safely they must stop or limit their work and declare this to the HCPC.

Question 4

What must a professional registered with the HCPC do to k maintain/prove the proficiency standard?

Answer 4

For each profession their are a set of specific expectations for the ability to practice effectively. Eg for practitioner psychologists these include professional autonomy and accountability, and formulation and delivery of plans and strategies for meeting health and social care needs.

Question 5

What must a professional registered with the HCPC do to k maintain/prove the continuing professional development standard?

Answer 5

Professionals are expected to take part in and document regular training, providing evidence on how they changed their practice. That they undertake to develop their own practice and keep up to date with current trends.

Question 6

What must a professional registered with the HCPC do to k maintain/prove the education and training standard?

Answer 6

There is a minimum level of qualification before people can register to practice in different areas of health and care professions. They must be able to evidence at least a masters and for some a doctorate is required.

Question 7

What must a professional registered with the HCPC do to k maintain/prove the prescribing standard?

Answer 7

Standards for the safe prescription of medication by health and care professionals. This also includes the required knowledge and training to be able to prescribe within professional practice.

Question 8

What are the different ways to uncover the causes of mental health issues

Answer 8

Longitudinal, cross sectional, cross cultural and meta analyses.

Question 9

How do researchers decide which research method is most appropriate?

Answer 9

1. Research aims
2. Requires primary or secondary data.

Question 10

What is a weakness of primary data? What is a weakness of secondary data?

Answer 10

Primary-

• Time consuming
• Ethical considerations

Secondary-

• No way of knowing how reliable or valid the original research was. So conclusions are drawn from data that was originally flawed, especially if multiple forms of data are being used.

Question 11

What are longitudinal research studies?

Answer 11

Takes place over a long time period, and often involves comparing a single sample group with their own performance over time.

Developmental or time based changes can be seen through the patterns of measurement.

In mental health research clinicians may be interested in monitoring changes in symptoms in patients groups undergoing a certain treatment.

Measurements may be taken of symptom expression and severity over a specific time period at certain intervals.

Question 12

What are the strengths of longitudinal research?

Answer 12

1. No difficulty making comparisons- Patients often have very different symptoms and experiences even when suffering from the same illness, so there is no difficulty making comparisons between different people that could be effected by individual differences.
2. Reliable- The only way to reliably measure the effect of time on the behaviour.

Question 13

What are the weaknesses of longitudinal research?

Answer 13

1. Small sample size- patients may drop out die or not be able to be contacted
2. Outdated- clinical psychology is fast paced with new ideas and treatments being developed all the time.

Question 14

What are cross sectional studies?

Answer 14

1. Quick snapshot of behaviour in a given population.
2. Use a large group of people in the sample to get a good ‘cross section’ of the whole target population.
3. Then draw conclusions from the data gathered.
4. eg. experiences of different ages suffering from schizophrenia. Take sample of participants of different ages at the same time and investigate them.

Question 15

Advantages of cross sectional studies

Answer 15

1. Conclusions drawn can then be acted upon more rapidly
2. Results are more likely to be valid as they will be reported at the time where they have most application rather than several years later.

Question 16

Disadvantages of cross sectional studies

Answer 16

1. Individual differences are likely to have a significant effect on the conclusions.
2. Cohort effect as results could be due to being raised in a particular time and/or place.

Question 17

What are cross-cultural methods?

Answer 17

Taking samples from different cultural groups to draw comparisons about the similarities and differences between them to consider how culture effects behaviour.

Could be used to question whether the experience of patients suffering from schizophrenia is the same in different cultural groups.

Whether treatments are equally effective in different cultural groups.

Question 18

What are the strengths of cross cultural studies?

Answer 18

1. Gain an understanding of how culture plays a role in the validity and reliability of diagnoses in clinical psychology.
2. Identify elements of abnormal behaviour that can be attributed to purely biological factors. This is done by identifying universal trends in behaviour that seem to remain unaffected by cultural variation.

Question 19

What is a weakness of cross cultural methods?

Answer 19

Likely to be conflict between the cultural values of some or all the participants and those of the researcher. Because of this the conclusions drawn may lack validity if the interpretation of the patients behaviours does not take into account their own cultural backgrounds.

Question 20

What is a meta analysis?

Answer 20

Involves looking at secondary data from multiples studies conducted by other researchers and drawing findings together to make overall conclusions.

A meta analysis looks at huge bodies of research.

The researchers will seek out studies from a variety of places, cultures and times, which have all tested the same area.

They can now more easily consider a large amount of data gathered from a huge overall sample size rather than having to go out and collect primary data.

Question 21

What are the strengths of meta analysis?

Answer 21

1. Conclusions can be drawn from the vast array of different areas and a huge overall sample, very quickly and at much less cost than would be involved in conducting all the studies themselves.
2. They also do not have any of the ethical concerns associated with conducting research on participants first hand.

Question 22

What are case studies and how are they used?

Answer 22

They involve studying individuals or small groups with some kind of unique characteristic or experience.

They use a variety of different research methods to gather information on the group, and then triangulate the data to draw conclusions.

Often data will be qualitative, allowing depth analysis of the group being studied.

This allows conclusions to be highly valid.

Full understanding of the patients problems can be assessed and all the factors that may have an effect on them can be taken into account.

Question 23

What are the strengths of case studies in clinical psychology?

Answer 23

Insight into the behaviour of the patients provided.

Question 24

What are the weaknesses of using case studies in clinical psychology?

Answer 24

1. Reliant on the interpretation of the researcher and their memory might be unreliable or inaccurate. Or may be interpreted incorrectly producing invalid conclusions.
2. Not representative of every one with a mental health disorder.

Question 25

What are interviews? and the different forms?

Answer 25

Verbal questioning of patients to gather information from them.

Interviews can be structured, involving a specific list of questions, semi-structured, involving a range of themes to explore, or unstructured, where the direction of the conversation can be decided along the way.

Question 26

What are strengths of interviews?

Answer 26

1. Allow patients to fully explain their own point of view, which allows researchers to understand their perspective more clearly.
2. More detail from unstructured and semi structured interviews.

Question 27

What is grounded theory?

Answer 27

Method of data gathering and analysis generally focuses on qualitative research evidence. Generally focused on qualitative research. Research is conducted to gather information about something of interest and the theory emerges from the data as it is gathered and analysed.

Question 28

How is grounded theory used?

Answer 28

1. Researcher identifies the area of behaviour they are interested in and where they can gather information on this from.
2. As the data is gathered ‘codes’ and ‘categories’ can be drawn out from what they have seen.
3. The researchers will begin by coding everything until they begin to see patterns.
4. As theoretical concepts become more obvious, the researchers will start to selectively code only the relevant data they gather, and they will move to sampling that gathers more evidence to support what they’re already beginning to see.
5. Once a clear theoretical concept had developed, the researchers can then review other literature and develop the theory in more detail.

Question 29

What are the strengths of grounded theory?

Answer 29

Evidence is integrated into the theory so the theory itself should have a good degree of validity.

Question 30

What are the weaknesses of grounded theory?

Answer 30

1. Researcher bias in their gathering and interpretation of the data the theory would be based on subjective opinion.
2. Miss crucial evidence that contradicts the concepts they believe they are starting to see.
3. Long time to gather and analyse and lots of skill.