Alternative treatments in pain management and medication therapy
This is a critical review of MacPherson, H., Thorpe, L., & Thomas, K. (2006). Beyond needling therapeutic processes in acupuncture care: A qualitative study nested within a low-back pain trial. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 12, 873-880. While the study does indeed share the clinical insights, attitudes, and thinking processes of acupuncturists treating chronic pain, it falls short in its other assumptions and simply portrays the researchers as nit understanding the very essence if the constructs they investigate.
Client of an Mro, or the In-House
Introduction
A choice facing the researcher at the outset of a research project is between using qualitative and quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The client of an MRO, or the in-house marketing research manager, generally has a budget available to finance a variety of studies and he or she will usually have to determine whether it is worth conducting a particular survey or study. This is frequently a subjective decision based on their previous experience of commissioning and conducting research (Swain and Jones, 2002). The choice made usually depends on the circumstances of the research project, its objectives and how much is already known about the management problem from either past research or experience. If there is little pre- understanding of the management problem faced, the researcher may wish to explore the problem further before attempting to research a possible solution.