Critical Appraisal of a Piece of Research - Essay Example

Yes. The research questions focused on the reasons for long-term older smokers with arterial disease to continue to smoke; and what the implications were to current smoking behaviour and future smoking intent. Do they perceive a relationship between smoking and the events and circumstances of their lives? What, according to them, is the part played by dependency in their smoking behaviour? Are their beliefs about the reasons for their smoking, reflected in their patterns and levels of smoking?

Will these beliefs have an impact on their intentions regarding smoking? semi-structured, face-to-face interviews using “life grids”. Changes in levels and patterns of smoking against events and circumstances of respondents’ lives were charted by “life grids”, which were incorporated in the study. An experimental group of current smokers were studied alongside a control group of ex-smokers. The total number of 70 respondents were recruited from the Edinburgh Artery Study, a longitudinal study supported by the British Heart Foundation (Fowkes, 1995).

This paper is based on a two-year qualitative study on “Life course influences on patterns of persistent smoking among older smokers and exsmokers with arterial disease.” The research sample consisted of 22 current smokers and 48 ex-smokers, aged between 65 and 84 years, with a minimum of 10 years smoking history, who smoked an average of at least 10 cigarettes a week throughout their smoking histories, and suffered from arterial disease (Parry et al 2001). The method of selecting the two groups was at random.

No particular method of allocation such as stratification was described. The groups were not well balanced, since the number of current smokers were less than half that of the ex-smokers. For the purpose of eliminating “observer bias” it is essential to