I have another example regarding patient fatigue. How variable is an oncology patient’s fatigue? I do not think their fatigue is a discrete measurement. For many of my patients, they associate their level of fatigue with when they last received chemotherapy or where they are in their chemotherapy cycle. Additionally, a patient’s fatigue can be related to anemia if the chemotherapy has caused their hemoglobin and hematocrit to drop.
Of course, there are some patients who do not experience fatigue, as you mentioned. Other patients have minimal declines in their energy level, and others are utterly exhausted. For these patients, we assess them to ascertain if blood products or IV fluids are needed. Following these interventions and when patients return for evaluation, their fatigue level is assessed again. I do feel that their responses reveal an improvement in their fatigue at their follow-up appointment. No matter their responses, this would be difficult for researchers.
An example of nonexperimental research involves observing the behavior of patients’ reactions to pet therapy. I am interested in knowing how people who are not “pet people” react to pet therapy. In the study performed by Thodberg et al. (2015), nursing home residents who were afraid of dogs or had an allergy to dogs were excluded. They explicitly mentioned that exclusion criteria were fear or an allergy, but did not discuss if residents had a dislike of dogs.
Thodberg et al. (2015) discuss the experimental study they completed regarding pet therapy and its impact on the nursing home residents’ sleep, psychiatric state, and weight. The researcher would need participants to sign consents to participate in this study. Interestingly, the participants had a cognitive decline during the experimental period (Thodberg et al., 2015). So, either non-experimental or experimental there are factors that can cause bias in this research study. Can you think of a type of bias?
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