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Ruba
Research Critique on "Empathy and social support for the terminally ill: Implications for recruiting and retaining hospice and hospital volunteers"
This particular research focuses on the relationship between empathy and social support as essential variables for the effectiveness of hospice and hospital volunteers. This paper will provide a critical summary and analysis of the research conducted by Nichole Egbert and Roxanne Parrott, proponents of this Communication Studies research. The format of this critique will first discuss the nature of each research step/method taken by the researchers, and after the summary, an analysis and critique of the paper will then be conducted.
The first part of the paper that will be studied includes the determination of the research problem, identification of related literature used in the study, and the analysis of theoretical, conceptual, and operational or hypothetical framework of the study. As was stated earlier, the research aims to determine the effectiveness of hospice and hospital volunteers by determining their levels of empathy and social support to patients. Three primary objectives of the paper emerge in relation to the questions that the paper tries to answer. The following specific objectives are enumerated as follows:
To learn more about how hospice volunteers communicate with their patients by comparing them to a group of volunteers who work in a traditional...
These research goals are interconnected with each other, and cannot stand alone as a single research variable to be discussed. Objective #1 aims to do a comparative analysis between hospice and hospital volunteers; such goal will be achieved by first determining the factors or elements that set these two groups apart with each other. Thus, once these factors have been identified, objective #2 emerges, where the researchers try to determine whether hospice and hospital volunteers have differences in their management of their volunteer work and most importantly, their effectiveness in making their patients comfortable and happy. Lastly, objective #3 shows how it becomes certain in the research (through its results) that empathy and social support have significant effects in affecting volunteer performance and patient recovery and/or satisfaction.
The technical part of the paper can be found in the Methodology part of the research. In this part, it is evident that the research used the descriptive and exploratory research design, since the…
References
Babbie, E. (1979). The Practice of Social Research (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., Inc.
Egbert, N. And R. Parrott. "Empathy and social support for the terminally ill: Implication for recruiting and retaining hospice and hospital volunteers." Spring 2003. (Attached document).
Sullivan, T.O., Hartley, J., & Fiske, J. et al. (1994). Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
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