Abstract
This paper is a research proposal aimed to understand the association between the consumption of high-fat foods and Doyle’s disease. The research will be based on a quantitative analysis of the eating behaviors of 60 elementary school children from 20 public schools in Baskerville. The proposed research would take six months of observing the eating behaviors of children. Evidence taken from medical reports should show if a high-fat diet leads to the development of Doyle’s disease, or not.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of the proposed study is to establish the relationship between Doyle’s disease and a high-fat diet. By evaluating this relationship, it would be easy to understand the effects of high-fat diets on human health.
- Null Hypothesis: There is no relationship between a high-fat diet and Doyle’s disease.
- Alternative Hypothesis: There is a positive relationship between a high-fat diet and Doyle’s disease.
Study Design
The proposed study will use a quantitative research design to understand the relationship between Doyle’s disease and high-fat diets. The quantitative research design is appropriate for this paper because it eases the probability of quantifying the above-mentioned relationship using numeric data (Madrigal & McClain, 2012). This way, it is easy to establish the nature of correlation between the dependent and independent variables.
Setting
The main research setting for the proposed study is an educational institution. The proposed study will therefore analyze the respondents’ behaviors based on their eating habits at school. The school setting is appropriate for the proposed study because it provides a controlled environment for observing human eating habits. Moreover, the schools have canteens that serve high-fat food. This environment would provide an opportunity to observe human behavior when children eat such foods. Finally, the school setting also makes it easy to collect data because the proposed study will survey a large sample of respondents in one location.
Participants
The sample population comprises 60 elementary school pupils. This population forms three groups. The first group comprises of pupils who consume high-fat foods and the second group comprises of pupils who do not consume them. The third group comprises children who eat foods that have low-fat levels. There will be no exclusion criterion for any of the above groups.
Recruitment
Considering my professional relationships with health workers and public education institutions in Baskerville, it will be easy to gain access to the respondents by observing their eating behaviors at school (the study samples 20 public schools). Since all the educational institutions sampled in this study serve high-fat foods, it would be easy to observe the eating behaviors of the three samples of students (described above) at the school canteens. Still, based on the easy access to the educational facilities, the school doctors from the sampled schools would provide medical diagnoses of the sampled respondents. This way, the researcher would obtain an accurate medical diagnosis of the sampled respondents and compare them to their eating habits. All the respondents recruited for the study would provide voluntary consent to participate in the study.
Variables
The consumption of high-fat diets will be the independent variable of the proposed study. The development of Doyle’s disease will be the dependent variable. The proposed study uses the doctor’s diagnosis as the measure of the dependent variable. Similarly, the proposed study uses a medical classification of high-fat diets (and the degree of consumption) as a reliable measure for assessing the independent variable.
Data Collection
The main data collection method for the proposed study will be the doctor’s diagnosis and student surveys. The doctor’s diagnosis should show if any of the respondents have developed Doyle’s disease and the student surveys should show the level of high-fat food consumption for every respondent.
Data Analysis
The proposed study will use statistical data analysis tools, like graphs, pie charts and tables to explain the statistical relationship between high-fat diets and Doyle’s disease. The proposed research also intends to ascertain the level of statistical significance of the above-mentioned relationship by evaluating if the statistics lead to the development of Doyle’s disease or not. If the analyzed statistics contribute to the development of the disease, the research would ascertain its significance to the findings.
Strengths
- Causal Inference: Since the proposed study is a quantitative study, the ability to understand causal inferences through a statistical method improves the strength of the study (Madrigal & McClain, 2012). This way, it would be easy to understand the causal link through statistical tools, such as median, mean, and standard deviation.
- Validity: The greatest advantage of the validity of the proposed study is the ability to derive important facts from the statistical findings. For example, by using statistical methods of analysis, the researcher would understand the health trends and differences in the health preferences of different demographics.
- Practical Considerations: The ability to provide a snapshot of a population sample supports the practicability of the proposed study. This advantage stems from the fact that the research design provides descriptive findings of the research (Madrigal & McClain, 2012).
Weaknesses
- Causal Inference: The main weakness of the proposed study is the “indicative” nature of the relationship between a high-fat diet and Doyle’s disease. Therefore, other variables, which the proposed study does not highlight, may affect the same relationship. To mitigate this weakness, the proposed research intends to investigate the statistical significance of the findings.
- Validity: Interpretive limitations of the expected statistics may cause interpretive variances of the research statistics. This limitation may affect the validity of the findings. To mitigate this weakness, the proposed research aims to use Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) method to standardize the research findings (Pharmaceutical Product Development, 2013).
- Practical Considerations: One weakness of the proposed research is the extended time that research would take to end. The data collection process occurs across six months. The respondents are supposed to remember their eating habits during this time. This requirement may pose a practical challenge to the observation and recording of eating habits. To mitigate this problem, the participants will record their eating habits during the research process. This way, they would easily refer to their notes when completing the surveys.
Generalization
The demographic limitation of the study is the main impediment for researchers to generalize the findings. The proposed study uses children as the primary sample. Since elementary school children participate in the study, the median age of the proposed sample would be 11 years. It would be difficult to extrapolate the same findings across a different age group (say, the elderly). Moreover, the expected findings may be limited to the types of high-fat diets consumed by the respondents.
References
Madrigal, D., & McClain, B. (2012). Strengths and Weaknesses of Quantitative and Qualitative Research. Web.
Pharmaceutical Product Development. (2013). Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) Experience. Web.