Helpful Actions through the Eyes of Parents of Children with Disabilities - Essay Example

Critical Analysis - Paper by Prezant and Marshak Helpful Actions seen through the eyes of parents of children with disabilities - Critique of the Paper The critique tries to answer the question, To what extent does this paper provide an accurate and representative account of parents’ experiences of professionals? This essay is aimed at providing a critical discussion of the ways in which the research process is needed to be adapted in order to gain the perspectives of students with disabilities. The focus is thus on how the research process could be adapted to answer the fundamental point of the analysis and that is whether the paper provides an adequate account of parental experiences. Some of the questions that could be answered here in the critique process are: 1.Does the author make a good-enough case in terms of demonstrating that the study is worth doing? Does it add to knowledge in the area? Does it test a theoretical/conceptual framework? Does it provide further (and convincing) knowledge relating to an educational issue / concern? 2.Is the design appropriate for the question(s) being asked? How might the design be modified / improved? 3.Is the paper well written and logically structured? 4.What are the particular issues relating to reliability and validity? 5.Is the sample appropriate? Is the sample large enough? Is the sample truly representative of the relevant population? What are the particular issues with this population? Are the tasks and materials appropriate? 6.Are the results clearly presented? Are they accessible and comprehensible? 7.Are the results adequately discussed in terms of: Their relationship to the aims and the research literature? What was found and what was concluded? 8.Are the conclusions appropriate and valid? To answer the first question of the critique, the rationale for carrying out the research is discussed. As argued by Prezant and Marshak (2006), parents of children with disabilities need a broad range of support services from service providers and child care units so that they could facilitate positive outcomes for their children and these support services will have to be aimed in a manner that meets the needs of the parents of children with disabilities. The needs of the parents may be varied and they may not always agree with professionals on what actions or services are truly helpful. In order to understand the parents viewpoints on the type of support services required, this research paper by Prezant and Marshak (2006) have focused on the aims of examining provisions of health care services provided to disabled children from the parents’ perspectives. The authors cite Kerr (1984) suggesting that the concept of help may differ from one person to another and that parents may have different opinions of help when compared with the professionals so it is necessary to understand parents view of what constitutes ‘help’. The theoretical framework thus seems strong in this case as the authors provide their case and their argument in a convincing manner, drawing on a conceptual framework of help and service. Help could be understood not only on the basis of unmet needs but also the type of nature of help needed. Marshak and Present (2006) suggest that parental perspectives on the kind of services provided to their children are very important as parents decide on what kind of help should be available to their children and what is most suitable for their children. Considering this, the authors do provide a string rationale for the need to carry out their research. The researchers aimed to study the parental perspectives about the nature of help they received from a broad range of professionals they interacted with and how this was of use if any for their children with disabilities. They followed a qualitative research analysis process. A survey instrument was designed and parental perspectives were taken on the nature of help they received from professionals. The instrument was based on Flanagan’s critical incident technique (CIT). The authors write that “CIT was developed by Flanagan (1954) as a means of gathering information about specific behaviors in order to address practical issues“. Thus the instrument mainly served to collect information and decipher behavior about practical issues and relied on observations that related to specific questions. The individual incidents that were cited by the participants constitute raw data and each individual was asked about situations or incidents. The survey instrument focused on incidents and observations and dealt with three questions and for each question parents were asked to identify incidents and provide their narrative response asking for what they thought were the bet method of help and how they described experiences with a health professional. The data were then analysed qualitatively. Although 800 surveys were distributed, 121 completed surveys were returned and finally analysed. The methodology maybe appropriate for the study but too much emphasis on the three questions could be rather inadequate for the study as these questions do not consider all dimensions of the concept of service or help. Too much emphasis on the three questions which could have varied responses may also provide a problem with regard to interpretation of responses. In fact with very few questions and a wide variety of responses, the validity of the study and the results obtained could get very difficult to integrate and draw conclusions from. In order to improve the methodology, more specific questions and less open ended responses could have been helpful. Although the paper is well written and logically structured, flaws in methodology and extreme open-ended-ness could be a hindrance to the general understanding if the paper. Also further convincing conceptual framework and literature review could have been provided to bolster support for the methodology and arguments. Although the tasks are appropriate, the methodology with a focus on open ended questions evoking a wide range of responses could have a severe impact on the validity of the study. Yet the fact that the researcher draw on a large sample of participants who are parents with experience on childcare provided by professionals, make the sample representative and could enhance the reliability of the study, since a large sample of representative population has been used. The results have been presented well with researcher stressing on reliability of up to 90% with inter coder thematic category choice. Thus the interpretations of results was based on the views of researchers who thus reached an agreement on how the data would be qualitatively categorized. Results obtained were then quantitatively tabulated to determine frequency of the responses marked by the parents. This balanced approach using basic qualitative methodology supported by a frequency method of quantitative tabular presentation helped enhance the validity of the study and helped in reducing flaws if any in the actual data collection process. The fact that the data have been collected only within a specific US region suggests that the study cannot be generalized to represent attitudes and perspectives of parents from other regions of the US or from other states and countries. This critical analysis shows that the study conducted by Prezant and Marshak on understanding health care and service needs of parents of disabled children is rather specific and one of its flaws is that the conceptual framework although provided has not been strongly supported by extensive literature review. The flaw in data collection is too much emphasis on very few questions and open ended questions meant that may have been serious problems in data interpretation especially as the sample population chosen was quite large. However the formation of thematic categories based on agreement between researchers suggested that the data interpretation methodology followed a balanced qualitative and quantitative approach that helped enhance the validity and reliability of the study. References: Flanagan, J. C. (1954) The critical incident technique, Psychological Bulletin, 51(4), 327–358. Kerr, N. (1984) Help that is helpful, in: D. W. Kreuger (Ed.) Rehabilitation Psychology, (Rockville, MD, Aspen Publication), 151–159. Prezant, F., Marshak, L. (2006). Helpful Actions seen through the Eyes of Parents of Children with Disabilities. Disability and Society. 21(1). Read More