Key Ethical Considerations
Conducting a study in the environment where key participants are underage implies managing a range of ethical issues, the problem of informed consent being the key one. Since none of the people to participate in the study will be eligible for signing informed consent, it will be imperative to have their parents or legal guardians to sign the paper. Otherwise, the participants of the study may be affected to a considerable extent. Therefore, an informed consent form will have to be sent to the parents or legal guardians of all potential participants of the study.
Also, maintaining the privacy of the people recruited for the research will have to be regarded as one of the key priorities. For this purpose, names must be mentioned throughout the research. Instead, potential participants will be addressed as “Patient A,” “Patient B,” etc. thus, the right to the participants’ privacy will be acknowledged (Hartas, 2015).
Protecting Human Rights: A Plan
To protect the human rights of the participants, one will have to focus on providing them with detailed clarifications about the research procedures, as well as guarantee complete anonymity. The specified objectives can be attained by ensuring that the children’s parents or legal guardians sign the informed consent, where detailed steps of the study are outlined. Also, securing participants’ data and replacing their names with shortened versions thereof (e.g., “Patient A,” “Patient B, etc.”) must be deemed as a crucial step toward meeting patients’ rights. Moreover, the security of databases will have to be increased by setting strong passwords.
Limitation of Proposed Study
It should also be kept in mind that the opportunities of the research are limited by the specifics of its design. For instance, the environment of experimental design may incorporate the elements that do not reflect the characteristics of real-life scenarios. As a result, the applicability of research results will be reduced significantly. To maintain the relevance of research outcomes, one will have to generalize them to a considerable extent (Bausell, 2015).
Moreover, the lack of control over extraneous variables is likely to affect the degree to which the situations explored in the study can be viewed as realistic. Therefore, the veracity of the study outcomes may turn out to be dubious. Although the identified issue should not be deemed as a massive impediment to answering the research question, it will limit the application of the study outcomes to a certain extent (Bausell, 2015).
Implications for Practice
It is assumed that the results of the research may be used to improve the current strategy toward managing childhood obesity. With the active use of the tools that will spur the process of patient education, one will be able to reduce the rates of childhood obesity significantly. Consequently, patient outcomes will be improved.
Besides, the opportunities for encouraging active patient education among children will be created. Since the target demographics may not yet have the critical thinking skills required to identify trustworthy and credible sources of information, it is essential to provide clear instructions about available dieting options, exercises, and other approaches for addressing the issue of obesity. Thus, the outcomes of the study will inform the choice of tools for patient education. As a result, innovative tools for involving both children and their parents in the process of learning more about the means of addressing childhood obesity can be created.
References
Bausell, R. B. (2015). The design and conduct of meaningful experiments involving human participants: 25 scientific principles. New York, NY: OUP.
Hartas, D. (2015). Educational research and inquiry: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Chicago, IL: Bloomsbury Publishing.