Research Diary #2

What is your topic? Or what are your key words thus far?

Policy

socioeconomic status

case control

accessibility

What is your research question? Have you decided to change it at all? And, if you have, how do I know that the way in which this question is formulated is appropriate to conduct a literature review with a systematic approach? 

After debating between the two topics I was going to conduct my research on I originally chose to ask the question of "What are the long term effects of lead exposure in young children", however after doing some critical thinking I decided to change my topic on socioeconomic status and how it is linked to health.

 My new research question is: How do people with a low socioeconomic status view health care and its availability? Are people with low socioeconomic more susceptible to certain chronic diseases than others? How have some experiences made people with low socioeconomic status not want to take advantage of health services?

"A systematic review is a critical synthesis of research evidence, which involves analysis of all available and relevant evidence in a systematic, objective and robust manner. A formal, rigorous methodological process is followed (Figure 1). This includes clarification of the research question, identification of eligible literature using electronic bibliographic databases and other information sources, assessment of study quality, data extraction, summarising and interpretation of results. A common misconception is that systematic reviews can only be conducted on RCTs. Systematic review methodology can be adapted to address a wide range of questions and the study design of the included studies will be dictated by the research question. "

And what are the definitions on which it depends?


My question depends on key terms, all of which are linked to the literature and those terms are:

Cross Sectional Uses different groups of people who differ in the variable of interest but share other characteristics like socioeconomic status, educational background, and ethnicity to collect data 
Theory Proving/disproving a “common” idea (a theory)…. Generated in response to evidence that has been gathered

Policy Government, reform, laws

What is your hierarchy of evidence? And how do I know you going about finding the most appropriate evidence/method for your research question?

Policy

Theory

Cross sectional

ARTICLE 1: The emergency department for routine healthcare: Race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and perceptual factors

This article relates directly to my topic because it discusses how race and ethnicity can effect a persons healthcare. This article studied the role of race, ethnicity, and healthcare in emergency health departments. One thing I found interesting is that the article provides statistical evidence using their own group of people to study." Race/ethnicity-based disparities in routine ED use were due to the confounding effects of SES. Programs to reduce inappropriate ED use must be sensitive to an array of complex socioeconomic issues and may necessitate a substantial paradigm shift in how acute care is provided in low SES communities." I plan on using the articles findings to provide statistical evidence on how people are sometimes treated differently depending on their socioeconomic status.

Hong, Rick (2007). "The emergency department for routine healthcare: Race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and perceptual factors". The Journal of emergency medicine (0736-4679), 32 (2), p. 149.

ARTICLE 2: Effect of race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status on healthcare satisfaction

This article relates directly to my topic because there are multiple parts to my research question and this would relate to the part of the question where it asks how have some experiences made people with low socioeconomic status not want to take advantage of healthcare services. The article states that it found, "when measures of patient-provider communication are normalized, other demographic and socioeconomic characteristics (race, gender, education) are not shown to be predictors of patient satisfaction. The result of this study validates finding of other studies as well as the theory of social determinant of health." I found this to be interesting and plan on incorporating this article into my final research paper to help me back up my research question.'

Otake, Yoshiake. Effect of race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status on healthcare satisfaction, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Ann Arbor.2014.

ARTICLE 3: Key Factors Influencing Health Disparities Among African Americans

This article relates indirectly to my research question because it is directed to a specific group of people. With this being said I feel that I might make my research question directed towards a specific group of people because I am starting to feel as if it is too broad. " A significant body of literature suggests that racism or discrimination may be a contributing factor to misdiagnosis, late diagnosis, as well as, the scope and veracity of treatment once African Americans are diagnosed with chronic illness or disease ". I found this quote to be the most interesting because I know that African Americans are predisposed to some diseases and there is often discrimination toward colored races anywhere and everywhere. After reading this article I plan on redirecting my research question towards the African American community.

McFayden, Elgie. “Key Factors Influencing Health Disparities Among African Americans.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 16, no. 3/4, 2009, pp. 120–132.

ARTICLE 4: Healthcare Disparities: The Salience of Social Class

This article relates directly to my topic because it discusses the unequal treatment of people with low socioeconomic status in the healthcare industry. "Empirical evidence demonstrates that minority and marginalized populations receive less and lower quality healthcare than more advantaged groups. Ethical analyses of these disparities explain their injustice. That disparities exist and constitute a moral wrong are uncontroversial views." I am very excited to use this source because it seems to hold the exact information that I am going to need when writing my research paper. This source is one that I feel holds the most information making it the main one out of the five.

Blacksher, E. (2008) ‘Healthcare Disparities: The Salience of Social Class’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 17(2), pp. 143–153. 

ARTICLE 5: WAITING TIME AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS—AN INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL ANALYSIS

This article relates indirectly to my article because it is kind of like a sub-topic in regards to the topics that are listed in my question. My question states that I want to find how people with low socioeconomic status view health care, and are they more susceptible to chronic diseases. I think that if needed I could incorporate the statistics that are provided in this source to provide more information of how people with low socioeconomic status are treated. One thing I found interesting is that ,"For men, there is a statistically highly significant negative association between income and waiting time, driven by men in the highest income group, which constitutes 12% of all men. More educated women, that is, those having an education above compulsory schooling, experience lower waiting time than their fellow sisters with the lowest level of education".

Monstad, Karin (04/01/2014). "WAITING TIME AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS - AN INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL ANALYSIS". Health economics (1057-9230), 23 (4), p. 446.

Anything else interesting happen?

After conducting more research on my topic and finding sources I have decided to redirect my question towards the African American community.