Women Decline Prenatal Screening and Diagnosis

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Abstract

This paper is going to carry out a critique of the article Women Decline Prenatal Screening and Diagnosis? The methods employed by the researchers will be examined. The paper will also seek to determine if the researchers managed to ground their theory and claims in actual data. The question of whether the researchers provided a proper description of their research will also be addressed. Finally, other issues about research, such as the number of participants, representativeness, and response rate, will also be studied.

Article Summary

The article by Liamputtong, Halliday, GradDipSoc, Watson, and Bell investigates the factors that make women in Australia refuse prenatal diagnosis and screening. The study was conducted by issuing self-administered questionnaires to women who had been pregnant for a period of twenty fours weeks by that time. Three hundred and ninety-five pregnant women were involved in this study. 46 women were picked from this group for further examination.

These females were recruited from different hospitals in Australia based on the number of pregnant women the hospital handled in its antenatal care unit. Research assistants and medical practitioners were used in identifying the participants. The self-administered questionnaires contained fifteen questions that captured data about the type of prenatal testing these women had obtained. The test was aimed at identifying if these women understood the reasons why one should or should not have prenatal testing, and the factors that influenced the decisions of these females (Liamputtong, Halliday, GradDipSoc, Watson, & Bell, 2008).

The research showed that the majority of women declined prenatal testing because of various reasons. The most common factor these women mentioned against prenatal testing was fear of abortion. This is because if the screening detects abnormalities in the fetus, the doctor will suggest an abortion. They also rejected prenatal testing because if some problems were detected, medication would be subscribed to sustain the pregnancy. Pregnant women also cited a certain risk as one of the reasons why they did not want to have prenatal testing. The cited risk was their belief that there was a possibility that the process itself might harm the fetus, or cause a miscarriage (Liamputtong et al., 2008).

This paper is going to carry out a critique of the article by Liamputtong et al. The issues, which are going to be examined here, include how the researchers have dealt with ethics and vigor in their research design and methods. Secondly, the paper will examine whether the techniques and the approaches they used in analyzing data are well described. Thirdly, the study will show the possibility of grounding theory as well as claims in data will also be examined. Other issues that will be considered in the research are the number of females involved, the design of the sample questionnaire, the adequacy of the responses, and the response rate.

How have the researchers addressed rigor and ethics in study design and methods?

Rigorous research can be defined as a study that employs relevant tools to ensure that the objectives of the investigation are achieved. Rigor in research is obtained by making sure that the techniques used to collect data yield accurate data for analysis. The techniques should also capture the variety of phenomena under investigation, and the tools used to analyze data should show the patterns and relationships between variables (Blumer, 1979).

Liamputtong et al. tried to achieve accuracy through sampling methods, and data collection techniques in their research. Concerning sampling methods, rigor was obtained with the help of trained research assistants and medical practitioners. Medical practitioners, such as doctors and trained nurses, were asked to identify pregnant women who, they thought, would be suitable for the research. In addition, criteria, such as education level and other demographic characteristics, were considered and taken into account while conducting a study. This ensured that only pregnant women who had relevant data concerning the prenatal diagnosis and screening were involved to take part in the research.

Multi-stage sampling was also used in the study to ensure that rigorous results were obtained. In the first sampling stage, three hundred and ninety-five women were selected from eighteen hospitals across Australia. After administering the first questionnaire, this figure was narrowed down to forty-six women, who perfectly met the requirements of the research. The data collection was carried out through self-administered questionnaires, which were in turn close-ended, ensuring that the respondents would pick the answers that best describe their opinion. This helps achieve the accuracy of the research by preventing the collection of irrelevant data, or facts that would be difficult to categorize and analyze due to many differences. However, the researchers failed to provide the exact methods they employed in the analysis of data. This can serve to cast doubts on the rigorousness of their results.

Ethics in research normally revolved around safeguarding the privacy of the data supplied by the respondent. Researchers sometimes faced ethical dilemmas when it came to generalizing the findings of research and safeguarding the privacy of the subjects involved in the study. The privacy of the respondents can be protected by observing appropriate ethical standards (Bernstein, 2002). Liamputtong and other authors addressed ethical issues through the method used in collecting data. The researchers used a self-administered questionnaire, which ensured that the respondents had privacy when answering the questions. Self-administered questionnaires also guaranteed that the respondents were not influenced, or coerced to respond in a certain way. Most questions in the questionnaires were close-ended making respondents choose the given answers, which best reflected their position. This made it possible for the respondents not to disclose too much personal information.

Is The Approach To Analysis And The Techniques Used Well Described?

The researchers have not adequately described their approach to data analysis and the techniques they used to analyze data. Instead, they provide their results in a tabular form indicating percentages, which they use in their discussion to support their claims.

Is There Theory Development in the Form Of A Step By Step Account of how theoretical Insights are built up?

There is no theoretical development and step-by-step accounts which indicate how theory is built in the research. The researchers do not come up with any new theory instead they seek to confirm the reasons why Australian women reject prenatal testing.

Are There Novel Claims?

There are no novel claims in the research because it is general knowledge that Australian women are reluctant to take prenatal testing. What the researchers did was to bring out reasons why Australian women declined testing.

Claims/Theory Development Grounded In Actual Data?

If evidence is sufficient in research, it should enable us to determine whether we should accept or discard the theory under investigation. To indicate that theory and claims are grounded by the facts, researchers must show that there are other similar theories, which are supported by the same evidence (Educational Research Service, 1980). In their study, Liamputtong et al. cited similar studies conducted in Australia to determine factors that influence women to reject prenatal testing. They also indicated that these researchers had come to the same conclusion as they did.

The major claim made by the authors is that most women in Australia rejected prenatal testing based on various factors ranging from fear of abortion to the potential risk the procedure has on the fetus. The claim and the theory used by the researchers were in line with the data they collected. The data indicated that seventy-two percent of pregnant women who participated in the study rejected prenatal testing because of the fear of abortion as their main reason. The researchers managed to base their theory and claims on actual data by using constant comparison as the main data analysis method.

The responses obtained from the pregnant women who participated in the research were grouped into categories in a table, and percentages were generated from different categories. These percents were then compared, and the results indicated that they met the theory the researchers were testing, and their prior claims. In their discussion section, the authors of the article backed up their claims with empirical evidence derived from data.

Precisely, the researchers managed to support their theory using data and indicated the relationships between different variables. However, the method of data analysis implemented by them, which was a comparison, may be used just to ensure that their theory was supported by concrete facts. The data that was analyzed in this research was obtained from forty-six pregnant women. This number may be too low to generate correct results that can adequately support the theory being investigated.

Is There Rich Description?

A rich description was required for the researchers adequately to indicate their area of research interest, the phenomena they were going to investigate, research design, and the variables they were to measure (Ogundipe, El-Nadeef, & Hodgson, 2005). Liamputtong et al. described the area of research they were interested in by informing their audience about the issues, and other studies conducted on pregnant women and prenatal testing. The subject of investigation and the variables that were measured in the research were also adequately presented.

The authors normally provide a rich description of the research design and methods used. Liamputtong and his colleagues provided details of the sampling method used in the research as well as how the procedure was conducted. For this study, the researchers obtained their sample through multi-stage sampling and used medical practitioners and trained research assistants in identifying pregnant women who could participate. The description of the sampling method ensured that only the relevant examples were included in the research. The process of data collection and tools used were also effectively described in the research. The initial data was collected from the results obtained from three hundred and ninety-five women. After analysis, forty-six women were identified as suitable for further study.

The questionnaire, which was the main tool used to collect data in the study, was also well described. It was self-administered and contained close-ended questions that were tailored to capture pregnant women’s perceptions about prenatal testing and demographic information. The researchers are also supposed to provide a detailed description of the results they obtained. They indicated the popular reasons that make pregnant women reluctant to have prenatal testing. The overview of the research, its justification, and its aims were also richly described in the article. However, the writers failed to present the methods of data analysis.

Are Findings Transferable

The findings of this research are transferable to any population of pregnant women in any region of the globe. This is because the factors these researchers cite as responsible for the rejection of prenatal testing apply to most women.

Is the Analysis Reflexive (I.E. Do the Researchers Take Account of the Potential Impact of Research(er) On Setting/Participants)?

The analysis is reflexive and the researchers take into consideration the potential impacts the researchers have on the subjects. This is why the researchers decide to use self-administered questionnaires as their main tool of data collection so that the subjects do not feel uncomfortable during the research.

Is There Attention Given To Negative Cases?

The researchers do mention that some pregnant women did not adequately respond, leaving certain fields in the questionnaire blank. However, data from such questionnaires were discarded during the analysis.

Other Issues

The initial number of females used by the researchers was 395 pregnant women, and it was further narrowed to 46 women. Being a national study, the sample size of women who participated in the study may limit the possibilities of generalizing the findings of this research. This is because the number may be too small to be compared to the general population, and assuming the general population using this sample may arise erroneous interpretations.

The sample may not also adequately reflect the opinion of pregnant Australian women. This is because the criteria used in obtaining the sample may have excluded the majority of women. The researchers conducted purposive sampling using certain demographic features and attributes such as education level. This might have served to exclude numerous pregnant women from the study, especially females from rural regions in Australia.

The questionnaires used in the research were self-administered and filled privately by the participants. These could lead to a collection of the wrong data because some participants may have requested other people to fill out the questionnaires on their behalf. Most of the questions in their questionnaire were close-ended, therefore limiting the ability of the participants to give their true responses. The researchers reported that some participants left certain fields in the questionnaires blank. All these factors could greatly interfere with the validity and accuracy of data.

References

Blumer, H., & Thomas, W. I. (1979). Critiques of research in the social sciences: An appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki’s the polish peasant in Europe and America. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

Bernstein, B. B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: theory, Research, Critique. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Educational Research Service. (1980).Class Size Research: A Critique of recent meta-analyses. Arlington, VA: ERS.

Liamputtong, P., Halliday, J., GradDipSoc, R. W., Watson, L. F., & Bell, R. B. (2008). Why do women decline prenatal screening and diagnosis: Australian women’s perspective? Women & Health 37(2): 89-108.

Ogundipe, L., El-Nadeef, M., & Hodgson, R.E. (2005). Lecture notes on paper critique: research methodology and statistic for critical paper reading in psychiatry. Victoria, BC: Trafford.

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