Methods Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Methods - Research Paper Example The design also involves administration of pre and post examination test to measure the fluid levels among the participants (Nationaltechcenter.org, 2013). For this study, a non-equivalent control-group design will be used to allow the researcher to compare the measurements of treatment group with the measurements recorded by the control group. This is intended to determine if there is a variance in in the level of dehydration that can be associated with the administration of diuretics. The control group in this study will be a group of 40 patients suffering from hypertension, who will not be allowed to use diuretics for a controlled period of time within the acceptable medical standards. A pretest will be done on them to measure the level of hydration before the experiment is done and a posttest carried out later. Treatment group in this case will involve another group of 40 hypertension patients who will undergo pretest to measure their level of hydration, then issued with diuretic tablets. A posttest examination will then be carried out on the treatment group to determine level of dehydration. ... Sample and Setting This study will involve a sample size of 80 patients suffering from high blood pressure and are between age 40 and 55. The sample size will be divided into two groups, one being a control group and the other being treatment group. This group of people was chosen because of their health condition and the fact that people with hypertension conditions are medically allowed to use diuretics under prescription of the doctors to help them lose fluids that are retained as a result of their conditions. The study will be carried out at Agha Khan Hospital during clinics schedules in collaboration with the hospital’s administration and the doctors’ guidance. The choice of this setting is influenced by the high turnover number of the blood pressure patients who visit the hospital on a daily basis and the availability of doctors to monitor the control group in case of any effect as a result of the planned temporary deprivation of diuretics. Description of the Powe r Analysis This study used G Power software for the power analysis. This helps to avoid trial-and-error method of finding a sufficient sample size, G Power allowed imputing the desired power of 0.8 as directed together with the given alpha value, which is 0.5 and expected effect size of 0.3 to generate the minimum sample size needed. The power analyzed here gives the probability of whether to accept or reject the null hypothesis. It should be noted that effect size is of 0.3 indicates that there was a small effect. The alpha of 0.5 shows the error or 95% confidence level in the data used or that the researcher is willing to accept a possibility of a 5% chance in the results. Quasi experiments control the intervening variables, since there is a controlled administration of the diuretics to