The mental health and well-being of people worldwide have been significantly affected by COVID-19. The pandemic led to the governments of many countries introducing strict measures to prevent the further spread of the virus. However, the imposed social distancing and bans on socializing at home and public spaces resulted in an increased number of psychiatric conditions among the elderly, including depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance abuse, and neurocognitive deficits. As the pandemic has emphasized these issues, it should be assessed whether mental health has been ignored for far too long that a pandemic such as COVID-19 was required to bring it to the limelight.
Proposed Research
The proposed research will attempt to determine whether the pandemic impacted how mental health issues among the elderly. However, it can be argued that many older adults suffered from a wide variety of psychiatric disorders before the lockdown, but they were not well addressed. Therefore, a question should be asked whether mental health among senior citizens was ignored prior to the pandemic. For the purposes of the outlined question, quantitative research is advised. It will allow the collection of numerical data on the discussed phenomenon (McLeod, 2019). Specifically, it will help to discover the proportion of the older adults who struggled with mental health issues before the lockdown and compare it to the percentage of those with psychiatric disorders during the pandemic.
Steps in Quantitative Research
Quantitative studies have several specific steps that researchers should adhere to in order to examine a phenomenon of interest. Thus, limiting the scope of the study through outlining the research question is the first step in any scientific investigation. The question can be re-assessed and re-written after reviewing the literature on the topic is performed to better address the gaps in existing research (Apuke, 2017). Next, the investigators should design the study, selecting the appropriate approach (Apuke, 2017). During this step, the authors planning to involve human subjects should also consider the future sample, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the ethical guidelines to ensure that participants will not suffer physical or psychological harm. After a research proposal is written, funding and ethics approval applications can be filed (Apuke, 2017). Once the study is approved, the authors can begin recruiting the sample and accumulating and analyzing data. The last step is drawing inferences from the analyzed information and relating finds to the posed question (Apuke, 2017). Overall, research is a time-consuming matter and requires careful consideration and design of each step.
Research Approach
The outlined question aims to establish whether mental health issues were prevalent among older adults before the pandemic or were induced by it. Therefore, the research approach should allow the investigators to collect two sets of data on psychiatric disorders during two distinct periods. It is recommended to utilize a survey approach to collect relevant information on the mental health of the elderly before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey can be defined as a non-randomized, non-experimental design as it aims to collect information from a population sample for its further interpretation and does not manipulate any data (Howitt & Cramer, 2017). Thus, the approach can be utilized to question a medium sample of elderly persons on the psychiatric issues they experienced before and during the lockdown. An additional sample of mental health professionals can be invited to participate in the study. Overall, the survey approach will help accumulate the required data to inform the research question.
Potential Data
The proposed research will help accumulate and compare numerical data on the mental health disorders among elderly persons before the lockdowns imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and during them. The potential data will include the resultant data from the surveys designed for the study. Specifically, it will incorporate the participants’ answers on the psychiatric issues they encountered before and during the pandemic presented statistically in order to compare the distinct periods.
Informing the Research Question
The analysis and interpretation of the collected data will help inform the research question and determine whether mental health has been ignored before the COVID-19 pandemic and was highlighted by it. If the study shows that a smaller proportion of elderly persons experienced psychiatric problems before the pandemic, it can be concluded that mental health was not ignored previously. Thus, the increased attention to the well-being of older adults can be viewed as a reasonable reaction of society to the newly developed issue. However, if the analysis reveals that the proportion of the elderly with psychiatric disorders before and during COVID-19 is equivalent, researchers can infer that their mental health has been overlooked.
Conclusion
The health and well-being of people worldwide have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and measures imposed to prevent its spread. Specifically, mental health became a primary concern among individuals of different ages. The proposed study aims to answer the following research question: Has mental health been ignored for far too long that a pandemic such as COVID-19 was required to bring it to the limelight? The quantitative research design will be implemented to inform the inquiry, with the necessary data collected via surveys of the elderly persons and mental health professionals. Overall, the selected design and approach will permit to determine whether mental health disorders became more prevalent during the pandemic or were disregarded previously.
References
Apuke, O. D. (2017). Quantitative research methods: A synopsis approach. Kuwait Chapter of Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 6(10), 40-47. Web.
Howitt, D., & Cramer, D. (2017). Introduction to research methods in psychology (5th ed.). Pearson Education.
McLeod, S. (2019). Qualitative vs quantitative research. Simply Psychology. Web.