Survey at the Health Fair

This health fair assessment survey is determining if people have access to healthcare and if they have encountered any problems or experienced any concerns with receiving healthcare. The researchers will interview participants about the locations they seek healthcare services, the types of services they are seeking and if they encounter any specific problems while seeking these services. The researchers hope to gain a better understanding of different healthcare resources and their availability. They want to know if people have trouble gaining these services and/or the reasons they may experience these issues so they can see if alternate services may be of benefit.

            Conducting an in-person interview can be tricky for some researchers because some participants can question the privacy of the interview when the interviewer is writing down their answers. As long as the interview is performed in a private area, there should be minimal ethical concerns. Some people may find this type of study to be uncomfortable because some of the topics of discussion may be private or controversial to speak about.

Survey Questions

            The questions seem to have specific responses but because there is a category called other to choose from, there could be some variations with the responses. Depending on the type of participants they are getting form this study, there could be some test-retest reliability. If the participants generally have the same education levels, socioeconomic statuses, and possibly similar zip codes, then the results may be similar if this study was conducted again.

            When it comes to face validity, the nature of the questions can cause the questions to be under-reported or downplayed. Since the research questions bring up controversial issues regarding discrimination, some people may choose not mention if they have experienced any type of discrimination. This can cause the questions to be lacking in face validity.

Administration of Questions

            The questionnaire should be administered either through an online questionnaire or pen and pencil. As mentioned before, due to the nature of the questions, some people may choose not to report the concerns or negative experiences they have had while seeking health services. This could be, in part, due to the uncomfortable nature of the questions or they may feel the interviewer will not understand. Some may even think the interviewer could judge to them if they knew they share something that is private to them so they would want their responses to be completely private, even from the interviewer.

Survey Strengths

            The survey gives the researcher an opportunity to fully assess the participants access to healthcare and if they experience any type of issues with receiving service or gaining access by allowing the participants to give another explanation. Most questionnaires give specific answer choices that you must fit your experience into but some people’s experiences could veer away from the answer choices.

            The questionnaire has a good overall appearance. The questions and answers are formatting in a clean manner which allows the interviewer to move easily through the questions. Also the questions are worded in a way that is easy for the interviewer to understand.

Survey Weakness

            The survey has both open ended and closed ended questions because it allows for the other explanation answer. This a weakness because the answers could vary from person to person thus causing the interviewers to see very mixed results.

Assets/Limitations

            The biggest asset of the survey is demographics category. The researchers made sure to set different categories that could affect their results. Age, education, socioeconomic status, race, marital status, employment status and zip code could all effect the results. I can imagine that a person who is single, unemployed, a minority, and living in a zip code that is a predominately low income area may not have adequate access to healthcare or may have negative experiences such as discrimination based on the ability to pay when seeking services.

            The biggest limitation, as mentioned before, is the type of survey being conducted. I believe by conducting an in-person interview, the researchers may not get the results they have hypothesized because people may be too uncomfortable to share their negative concerns or experiences. The interviewee may think that the interviewer does not identify with their experiences due to cultural barriers and may feel less eager to share their negative experiences.

            

Too Blessed Part 2

   The article written by Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, “Too Blessed to be Stressed” is about rural African American males, whom have strong ties in faith based communities, and their perceptions about the experiences they had with depression (2013). The authors strongly believe that faith based communities are better equipped to handle African American men’s depression because most African American’s use prayer as a treatment method for depressive symptoms rather than clinical treatments (Bryant et. al, 2013). Because depression symptoms are usually misdiagnosed in African American men due to cultural differences, the authors used interviews to explain how African American’s view and express their own depression symptoms within their faith based communities in hopes that better methods can be applied to helping them overcome their depression.

            The African American faith based community have a more negative view of depression among their men due to cultural teachings; these men tend to deny experiencing depression because of negative stigmas that surrounds their symptoms (anger, aggression, substance use, impulsive behavior, etc.) (Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, 2013). They truly believe they are more likely to be incarcerated, hospitalized or experience some form of job discrimination (Bryant et. al, 2013). The social issue, research question, social work practice relevance and purpose of the study was conveyed very well. I did not have any issues with the descriptions the authors gave.

            The theoretical framework wasn’t really mentioned due to the article being a qualitative research. The organization of the literature review and the concepts of the nominal definitions and major concepts was clear and easy to follow but there is some literature review that isn’t very current and needs to be updated to reflect current times. Some of the literature review was 10 to 15 years outdated and may not be accurate as statistics can change every 10 years or so.

            The type of study presented in the qualitative article was an exploratory study. The data was then entered into an ethnographic program. There didn’t seem to be any biases and the researchers were trained to deliver the research methods. The coding used tested the validity of each category that was being measured and didn’t seem to present any issues.

Sampling

            The authors used a small sample in this research as convenience sampling was used to get their participants. The author used nonprobability with their sample because they could only get participants who would agree to participate from select churches. The sample selected isn’t very strong because it does not fully represent the rural African American faith based community since it was confined to select churches and members. The lead researcher and community partner recruited individuals through personal contacts in the community (Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, 2013). The authors mentioned their reasoning for getting participants in Northeast Arkansas was due to the 2010 Census showing that the area has the largest African American population (Bryant et. al, 2013). The sample size used included 24 people with 16 being male and 8 being female. Because this research focused on African American males, only people of color were studied but the sample size of women wasn’t equal to the sample size of men. The authors acknowledged that their sample and size used showed limitations within their research. A different strategy for gathering the participants should have been used. First, instead of focusing only on the rural population, the author should have focused on African American’s across the U.S., since the literature review mentions African Americans as a whole and not only those in the rural area. Also, the sample size should have been vaster. Since they decided to use a community leader to recruit participants, they should have recruited more community leaders because this could have given them a larger sample size that represents more the faith based community.

Design

The methodological approach is appropriate for the research question although instead of conducting interviews, surveys could have been just as effective. Surveys are easier to measure than interviews because everyone’s answers vary so drastically. With interviews, a person may not always give a clear cut response as with a survey, the questions and responses are clearly defined. The authors conducted the research in private rooms, restaurants, conference rooms, and churches; following the research they gave everyone a 25-dollar gift card. (Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, 2013).

Each participant comes from different educational backgrounds. Some participants had high school educations while others had as high as graduate degrees. The participants also varied with social economic statuses, from income below the poverty line and as much as over 100,000 dollars a year. The descriptions are relevant to aid in judgment of the situations but it does explain why the study findings slightly varied from what the authors were hoping to find. People of different educational background and social economic status will most likely have differing views.

Conclusions

The results find that many African Americans in rural faith based communities view depression from a social and environmental standpoint and it’s not easily solvable through their faith as many of them deny experiencing symptoms (Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, 2013). The conclusion is directly related to the findings of the research. The authors offer different explanations, based on their results, as to why the findings did not relate to previous studies. The main reason is because the African Americans did not view depression from a symptomatic and clinical standpoint thus making treatment seeking almost obsolete (Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, 2013). The authors did not mention any participants that did not fit their findings. It is assumed that they did not have any outliers. The findings are discussed in terms of their content and method as it focuses only on the results from the interview and the way it was gathered.  

Though the authors mention the limitation with the research sample and size, they do not mention any other limitations. There are other limitations with this research article. As mentioned previously, some of the literature review seems to be outdated and may not be representative of today’s time period. Also, the transcripts do not give much detail about the interview itself. The authors do not reveal what questions were asked and if these same questions were asked of each participant. Very little statistical information is revealed about the findings.

The study doesn’t seem to have any ethical issues as it is current with today’s ethical standards; no trade-offs are made between the different ethical guidelines. They seemed to follow everything from the principle of community-based participatory research ethical guidelines (Bryant, Haynes, Greer-Williams and Hartwig, 2013). The authors made sure to give each participant Human Subjects Protection Training before conducting the research.

Although this research article has its limitations, there are some strengths that contribute to social work evidence-based practice. This article shows a huge disconnect in the African American community with major depressive disorders. Since many individuals in the African American community cannot seem to recognize the symptoms of the disorder from a clinical standpoint, many do not seek treatment and continue to have lifetime suffering. With the information this article has provided, future research can focus on different methods or techniques to reach the African American communities. Educated the African American community on major depressive disorders could be essential to properly diagnosing those who suffer from it. Since there is likely a cultural disconnect with clinical professionals such as social workers and doctors, more training can be implemented in practice in order for them to recognize different symptoms among ethnic cultures.

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References

Bryant, K., Haynes. T., Greer-Williams, N., & Hartwig, S., M. (2013). Too blessed to be stressed: A rural faith community’s views of African American males and depression. Journal of Religion and Health, 53, 796-808. doi: 10.1007/s10943-012-9672-z