Nigerian Reproductive Health This Literature

Nigerian Reproductive Health

This literature methodology addresses the question of how to use a written summary of a document that describes the state of reproductive health today in Nigeria. The topic of reproductive health is a vital one on both a micro and a macro level. The former because it can be a question of life or death to individual women, with a huge ripple effect for the rest of their families. On a macro level, the reproductive health of women (and to a much lesser extent of men) affects nearly all aspects of a nation's health.

Women who have control of their fertility as well as access to appropriate and adequate healthcare for themselves and their young children are able to contribute more to the economy of the country, have greater autonomy and satisfaction in their own life, and are more likely to live a longer, healthier life. Moreover, they are likely to have fewer children. A reduced rate of fertility is generally a good thing in a country that has such a high level of fertility currently, a level that will be hard to maintain given its resources. The number of children that a woman chooses to have should be her choice and should not be limited by the government simply to achieve overall demographic goals; however, it should be a wholly free choice, which under the current chances is not true because of limitations on healthcare, including reproductive healthcare.

One of the barriers to improving reproductive healthcare in Nigeria (or indeed, in any country) is to begin with an accurate description of the state of healthcare and the needs of the population for improvement. Such an accurate assessment is difficult to achieve for several reasons, part of which is that it is an area of behavior that people are reluctant to discuss, although certainly some aspects of this area of behavior (such as how far women need to travel to see a doctor, how long they have to wait to see a doctor or nurse, and how much healthcare costs them) are more easily determined.

Another difficulty that presents itself in assessing the state of reproductive healthcare in the nation is that it is difficult if not impossible to assess healthcare needs in a population that has not had access to such care. If a population is not aware of the options that are possible, it is impossible for them to respond about what services they would like to utilize. Thus part of the process of assessing reproductive health is educating women and their families about the resources that could be made available.

Fundamental Choices in Research Design

The question then arises as to how a researcher can begin to assess how to design a research plan that forwards the process of understanding the current state of reproductive healthcare in Nigeria. One of the initial decisions that the researcher is faced with in pursuing such research is whether to use primary or secondary sources of data. Primary data is information that the researcher herself or himself gathers. Secondary data is data that someone other than the researcher has collected.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to both types of data. Primary data can be time-consuming and expensive to collect, especially if the goal is to collect data on a national level. However, the advantage to a researcher of collecting his or her own data is that the researcher can have a high degree of confidence in the accuracy of the data. This can be summarized by the adage: If you want to do something right, do-it-yourself.

Secondary data requires far less time and expense to gather, as in this case. There is already data on the state of reproductive health and healthcare in Nigeria gathered that is readily accessible for a researcher to use. The drawback of such data, as suggested above, is that the researcher has far less information on how accurate the information is, how carefully the original researcher(s) carried out their research, including whether the original researchers had a personal or political agenda that might have colored the research.

This research project has chosen the latter strategy, seeking to assess the state of reproductive health in Nigeria by using research that has been gathered by other people. Having chosen this strategy, there are several other key decisions that the researcher has to make before designing a formal research plan. The next key decision to be made in research design is whether one should conduct qualitative or quantitative research.

Research in the social sciences can be classified as being pursued through quantitative or qualitative methodology or mixed-method research, which combines the two. Among the most popular quantitative methods are surveys and observations: Both of these methods are appropriate to quantitative research because they provide data that can be manipulated statistically, therefore providing research that can be generalized.

The primary research that this research project itself is based on contains a sufficient amount of quantitative data that would allow the researcher to conduct quantitative assessments. Again, as is the case with the choice between primary and secondary data, there are both advantages and disadvantages to both types of data, and in this particular project the researcher has access to both types of data and so to research that involves either one or both forms of data.

Epistemological Choices

It might seem to be the choice between quantitative research and qualitative research (the former of which deals with things that can be counted, the latter of which tends to deal with words) would be a clear-cut one depending on the type of data that one has access to. However, arguably all data can be used to perform either qualitative or quantitative research. The choice of which basic research model to pursue is more an issue of the kinds of questions that one wants answered as well as certain assumptions that the researcher has about the ways in which knowledge is constituted.

Another major difference between qualitative and quantitative research is the underlying assumptions about the role of the researcher. In quantitative research, the researcher is ideally an objective observer that neither participates in nor influences what is being studied. In qualitative research, however, it is thought that the researcher can learn the most about a situation by participating and/or being immersed in it. These basic underlying assumptions of both methodologies guide and sequence the types of data collection methods employed. (The qualitative vs. quantitative debate, n.d.)

Given the above assessment of the fundamentally different views of the world that the two different types of research design are based on, it seems unlikely that the two can be meshed in any sort of seamless way. Certainly there are many researchers who combine the two types of research, probably because they are aware of the fact that each research methodology can be seen as compensating for the lacks in the other.

While there is certainly a well-established tradition of combining the two types of research design, this researcher is more inclined to agree with the following assessment:

Some researchers believe that qualitative and quantitative methodologies cannot be combined because the assumptions underlying each tradition are so vastly different. Other researchers think they can be used in combination only by alternating between methods: qualitative research is appropriate to answer certain kinds of questions in certain conditions and quantitative is right for others. And some researchers think that both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used simultaneously to answer a research question. (The qualitative vs. quantitative debate, n.d.)

Having considered the various possibilities that each form of research design facilitates, this researcher has determined that for the current project a qualitative approach is more appropriate. There are certainly limitations with such a choice given that the data set is a secondary one and thus cannot supply the degree of rich data that primary data would supply.

For example, if the researcher in this case were conducted open-ended interviews as well as performing observations as would be the case in an ethnographic style of research, the information that would be available would be of the kind that the anthropologist Clifford Geertz described as "thick" information, information that could be analyzed from a variety of different perspectives.

Working from a document assembled by others does not permit the kind of typical "thick" analysis. However, and this is the reason that this project is proposing to use qualitative forms of analysis, by using less typical methods of research design such as semiotic analysis and textual analysis it is possible to transform this document from a form of secondary data into primary data. In other words, documents such as this one provide a method of assessing what is important to the compilers of the data.

Such a textual analysis provides yet another perspective on the epistemological underpinnings of research. The epistemological basis of research is the assumptions that the researcher makes about how much we can know about the world around us and what is the best way that we can extract that knowledge. It is never possible to know everything about the world: We each possess a limited perspective. However, the point of research (as opposed to other ways of investigating the world, such as writing poetry) is to maximize the amount of knowledge that one can acquire.

Textual analysis in this case would treat written assessments of the state of reproductive health in Nigeria as a form of narrative about the culture, a form of storytelling. To describe it as storytelling, however, might be construed as implying that the texts in question are somehow fictional, or even intentionally inaccurate. But the point of textual analysis, the fundamental reason that this form of research design and analysis exists to begin with, is that all texts (whether written or verbal) can be analyzed as a form of story.