Читать книгу Health Psychology - Michael Murray - Страница 151

An uncontrolled variable is the bête noire of any research study. This is a background variable that, unknown to the investigator, operates within the research environment to affect the outcome in an uncontrolled manner. As a consequence, the study will contain the risk of producing a false set of findings.

Future Research

1 More studies using qualitative and action research methods will help to broaden the focus on quantitative research in health psychology.

2 More research is needed on the health experiences and behaviour of children, ethnic minority groups, disabled people and older people.

3 The evidence base on the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions needs to be strengthened by larger-scale randomized controlled trials.

4 More extensive collaboration with health economists is needed to carry out cost-effectiveness studies of psychosocial interventions.

Summary

1 The principal research methods of health psychology fall into three categories: quantitative, qualitative and action research.

2 Quantitative research designs emphasize reliable and valid measurement in controlled experiments, trials and surveys.

3 Qualitative methods use interviews, focus groups, narratives, diaries or texts to explore health and illness concepts and experience.

4 Action research enables change processes to feed back into plans for improvement, empowerment and emancipation.

5 A top-down research approach is when a theorist, director or senior professor decides on the nature of the research to be carried out, the research goals, the questions or hypotheses to be investigated, and the methods used. Critics argue that the top-down approach tends to produce confirmation biases and group-thinking, which constrain creativity and innovation.

6 The ‘bottom-up approach’ uses an open-ended approach with qualitative or mixed methods data to learn about the thoughts, feelings and lived experiences of the research participants. The voices of patients and their families are viewed as crucially important in the production of new theories and therapies.

7 A hierarchy of evidence has been proposed which places meta-analyses and systematic reviews at the top of the hierarchy and qualitative research at the bottom. Multiple sources of evidence may be synthesized in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which is helpful in appraising the state of knowledge in particular fields. However, qualitative methods about lived experience provide a necessary counterweight to descriptive methods that are purely quantitative in nature.

8 Evaluation research to assess the effectiveness of health psychology interventions has generally been too small-scale and of low quality. There is a need for large-scale studies that are methodologically rigorous to evaluate interventions.

9 Interventions need to describe completely, using a taxonomy, so that we can compare and contrast interventions across studies, replicate the intervention in other settings and advance the science of illness prevention by enabling theory testing in the practice of health care.

10 Health psychology has yet to show its full potential by conducting high-quality research with a full gamut of methods and disseminating the findings across society.