Which would be the most appropriate researchable population for use in your research project?
The researchable population should focus on delivering the objective of the study. In this case, the risks associated with early elective delivery would provide the objective of the study. Therefore, the most appropriate researchable population will be live-born infants of 32 weeks’ gestation or more with developmental assessments at school age. This population-based study will provide the linkage between early elective delivery and developmental assessment. The study would help to establish whether early elective delivery makes children vulnerable for two or more national domains of assessment. Researching children from early elective delivery [EED] would expose the kind of risks associated with EED. For instance, domains such as knowledge and communication, physical health and well-being, social competence, language and cognition, and emotional maturity would be assessed to establish developmentally high-risk [DHR] domains. In essence, population-based research would help expose the risks associated with EED for analysis. Assessing children born through EED would also help in galvanizing the focus group for further research. According to Krueger and Casey (2015), the method facilitates the collection of adequate data within a defined period. Focusing on a given population method is essential because it helps the researcher to customize his domains based on the requirements of the study (Bentley et al., 2016).
What are the challenges of obtaining a sample from this population?
Obtaining a sample from children born through early elective delivery would pose several challenges. Firstly, such cases are usually scattered based on the geographical domain. In this regard, locating this population would require researchers to define their area of research. Achieving sample richness is usually another challenge. Moreover, recognizing that the sample chosen is rich and non-biased is another challenge to consider. Having noted the fact that the population involved in EED is scattered, the researchers should also consider that the population is scarce. In this regard, getting an adequate number of participants would be tiresome and costly to researchers. Moreover, choosing a sample from the population would be quite challenging given the scarcity of the focus group. More resources would be required to reach the participants, which would require one to focus on a given area to lower the costs involved. In essence, these challenges may compromise the quality of data. Also, it would compromise the richness of the sample as well as the qualitative integrity of the study. For instance, EED is mainly done to high-end clients because of the high costs involved, which is about 10 times the cost of normal delivery. This results in sampling among high-end clients, which would possibly give a biased sample if used on the general population (Roy, Zvonkovic, Goldberg, Sharp & LaRossa, 2015).
How could you address those challenges?
It is essential that every research address qualitative integrity, sample richness, and representation. This would help to reduce biases and low quality. Challenges facing sampling of the population are numerous. Researchers need to find ways of mitigating the challenges without interfering with the quality of data. In researching EED, researchers should focus on obtaining a rich sample by ensuring that adequate background check is done of the focus group before sampling. Moreover, the right sample size should be chosen to ensure that the sample is representative of the population. A very small sample can be misleading to the researchers. As mentioned earlier, sampling decisions can compromise the quality of data, researchers should focus on the best-suited type of sampling method for the given population. Furthermore, researchers should explore the links between validity and saturation when sampling. Additionally, researchers should provide a lucid explanation that demonstrates integrity, theory, epistemology, quality, and richness of the sample obtained (Salemi, 2014).
References
Bentley, J., Roberts, C., Bowen, J., Martin, A., Morris, J., & Nassar, N. (2016). Planned birth before 39 weeks and child development: a population based study. Pediatrics, 136(6), 1-8.
Krueger, R., & Casey, M. (2015). Focus group: A practical guide for applied research. New Delhi, India: Sage Publications.
Roy, K., Zvonkovic, A., Goldberg, A., Sharp, E., & LaRossa, R. (2015). Sampling richness and qualitative integrity: challenges for research with families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 77(1), 243-260.
Salemi, J. (2014). Elective early term delivery and adverse infant outcomes in a population-based multiethnic cohort. Web.