U.S. Health Care System Research Questions and Design

U.S. Health Care System
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With the population in America aging, there is a question of how well prepared the nation is to handle care for the elderly. As Dall et al. (2013) point out, the increasingly large elderly population will require an increasingly large and specially trained health care workforce within the next decade to ensure quality care is available. LTC beds are certainly not the only place to put the elderly and communities can be developed that allow elderly persons who are able to care for themselves to live independently. Younger family members may also be interested in providing support and assistance, and this is important to consider as without some familial or social connection, the elderly population can begin to feel isolated, depressed, and become withdrawn from the world (Rowe & Kahn, 1997).
The best way for people to age out into death is the way that they are most comfortable with: choices should not be made for them that they would not like. Giving the elderly the opportunity to be involved in their own care planning is important. It is also crucial to have a culture in place that supports this practice—and the culture is in the process now of disintegrating, as there are fewer children today than there were half a century ago—which indicates a loss of culture being passed on from one generation to the next. With fewer people paying into the system there is also the risk of there not being enough Medicare subsidies to go around. However, it is not ethical for one person to have access to more services than another. Everyone should have equal access to care—but that is an issue that will need to be decided by law maker as they work out a solution to health care in the U.S.
References
Dall, T. M., Gallo, P. D., Chakrabarti, R., West, T., Semilla, A. P., & Storm, M. V.
(2013). An aging population and growing disease burden will require alarge and specialized health care workforce by 2025. Health affairs, 32(11), 2013-2020.
Rowe, J. W., & Kahn, R. L. (1997). Successful aging. The gerontologist, 37(4), 433-440.
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A questionnaire research method allows the researcher to obtain data through a written data collection instrument such as a survey. The questionnaire may pose questions or statements to a respondent; these can be open-ended or closed-questions and depending on how the researcher wants to analyze the data, they can be written responses that are provided by the participant or they can be selected responses, such as is typical in a Likert scale measure (Van Laerhoven, Van Der Zaag-Loonen & Derkx, 2004).
A hypothetical research scenario would be to obtain information on the impact of community care interventions among the elderly population in an attempt to eliminate feelings of depression and isolation. The research question would be: What is the effect of community care interventions on elderly populations suffering from depression and isolation?
Some considerations I would make in designing the research would be whether to make it a qualitative or quantitative study. Qualitative would allow me to ask open-ended questions and engage more in exploratory research while quantitative design would allow me to use a Likert scale type of measure for the questionnaire and simply make statements to which the participant could respond with a degree of agree or disagree that is numbered from 1 to 5. The method of the questionnaire would be useful in either design but depending on how I want to answer the question, whether with statistical data that is analyzed or with subjective data that is analyzed for content and themes that emerge, I would shape the design of the study accordingly. Or I could mix the two methods and use a triangulation of data for a mixed-methods approach that would yield a fuller picture of the subject (Jick, 1979).
References
Jick, T. D. (1979). Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: Triangulation in
action. Administrative science quarterly, 24(4), 602-611.
Van Laerhoven, H., Van Der Zaag?Loonen, H. J., & Derkx, B. H. (2004). A comparison
of Likert scale and visual analogue scales as response options in children's questionnaires. Acta paediatrica, 93(6), 830-835.