Research Questions:
1-What specific guidelines do pediatricians need for referrals to early intervention specialists?
2-What diagnoses result in higher referral rates?
3-What type of screening tool would facilitate pediatricians' referrals to early intervention specialists?
4-What types of developmental questions should parents be asked during well-child visits?
5-How do male pediatricians differ from female pediatricians in their referrals to EI services?
Great job Heather. Your purpose is more qualitative in nature (due to the word explore), but several of your questions are quantitative. I'm assuming you want to conduct some interviews/focus groups? I'm thinking a mixed methods study could be nice.
ReplyDeleteFor RQ1, do they already have guidelines they follow? Maybe a simple, what process do pediatricians use for referring children to early intervention services? Or something like this should be the first question.
then follow up with what do pediatricians need to facilitate referring children for early identification services? or something like this; not sure I like the verbiage here, but I like the idea of it.
Both these could be answered qualitatively through interviews or quantitatively through surveys IF you can come up with the potential processes and needs for them to choose from (and you could include an other category and open ended question to cover anything you missed).
RQ 2 is fine if the literature doesn't really cover this (or if it is inconsistent). This would be a quantitative question.
RQ3 could be covered in the suggested question on what is needed, correct?
RQ4 is fine, but maybe delete "types of;" I don't think the words are necessary.
RQ5 is fine, but definitely quantitative. I might also be interested in a relationship between years of practice and number of referrals to EI. OR if new pediatricians differ in the number of referrals compared to veteran pediatricians. Either one (just depends on whether years of practice would be categorical or continuous).
So, depending on how you ask the first couple questions, you might need to change your purpose statement from explore to determine.
However, now looking back at your purpose statement, after reading your RQs, there is a disconnect. Your purpose implies you will be providing guidelines to them, but you don't test this or get their perceptions on this (you only ask what what guidelines they need). So if you want to implement guidelines with them then this is really more quantitative (or mixed methods if you will collect information on what they need qualitatively, and then implement and assess quantitatively). But again, you would need questions addressing this.
It depends on what you are planning on doing; implementing guidelines or determining what it is they are doing and what they need to do more...
I'm happy to provide additional comments on any changes to your purpose and research questions.
It's looking great Heather! I bet you're going to get a lot of great information!
ReplyDelete