SPIRITUALITY IN OLDER ADULTS

Spirituality in Older Adults

Spirituality in Older Adults

Introduction

Spirituality and its associated patterns of healing have been a grave source of help to understand the condition of the patient or an individual with an ailment. In primitive times, when even doctors weren't available, people diagnosed with a disease would be left out in the open, without the consent of the person to rot in that disease, being labelled an outcast or possessed by a demon, thus leading to a most unpleasant death (Gall et al 2005). For instance, at the time when Cholera first spread, people left out on deserted boats and sent far away from families so that the disease would not get to them. Even with the most humble of plea, the person would not survive the disease and not be treated, thus dyeing and vanishing without a trace. In this paper we critically evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of three research studies based on spirituality for older adults.

Setting

An important part of the research is the research's setting. It is necessary that the researcher gives the names of the agencies or institutions which are organizing and carrying out the research. The researcher must show that the agency was fit for supplying adequate number of participants for the research study. Another important element of research is the group's characteristics (Denise, Polit & Beck 2010).

The size of the sample is of crucial importance in quantitative research. In all the research studies under review, the focus groups were older adults. There might be risk of drawing appropriate sample for the research purpose given the varying degree of health statuses of this age group. The criteria for sampling, therefore, are of crucial importance to establish research validity. For instance, one criterion on which a reasonable sample could be drawn could be the Quality of Life (QoL) of the adult individuals in the research studies (Denise, Polit & Beck 2010).

Sampling Strategies

When undertaking quantitative research it is important to realise that studying a small number of people (sample) may produce chance results. The study sample therefore should be large enough to reduce any chance bias from creeping in (Polit & Beck, 2010). The researchers of this paper have therefore took this point seriously and fairly large, diverse and representative sample is used to ensure maximum accuracy of the results. The research sample in question represented diversity of demographic nature that spanned around the income, age, and education factors. In addition, three main racial or ethnic populations were recruited for the study: African American and the Caucasian. There were notable differences observed when the results showed that women of Caucasian origin had considerably advanced earnings of their family to support them in comparison to the women of African American origin and those of Latino origin. Moreover, the women of African American origin had a slightly noteworthy greater income of family on the yearly basis in comparison to women of Latino origin.

Purpose and Design

Knowledge of basic research design is a useful tool ...