1. Was there a clear statement of the aims of the research ?
Yes. In the article, the aim of the research was to understand the experience of participants, their knowledge about type 2 diabetes, and the factors of medication adherence in Malaysia. According to Susan (2010), the five components of PICOT are population, issue, context, outcome, and time. According to Al-Qazaz et al (2011), the PICOT was presented by the researcher in the study were,
P: Type 2diabetes patients with receiving of hypoglycemic medication.
I: Identifying participants’ perception, and their knowledge about type 2 diabetes disease and medication.
C: USM clinic of Malaysia, where the study took place.
O: It helps people living with type 2 diabetes to have a diverse understanding by relating with other people’s experiences.
T: March and April of 2009.
Qualitative PICOT is a framework to help in formulating effective clinical question in a step-by step manner (Melnyk and Fineout , 2010).
2. Is a qualitative methodology appropriate ?
Yes.Qualitative research is to study a person’s behavior and lived experiences related to what is being studied in the research (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). The key characteristics of qualitative study in this article included a small sample size, in-depth interview (semi-structured), researcher involving during interview, non comparisons and non numerical.
In qualitative study, sample size are usually small that achieve in-depth understanding of the experiences or feeling of the participants (Polit and Beck, 2012). Meanwhile, a semi-structured interview was used to collect data by codding participants’ ideas arising until no more new themes emerging. According to Polit and Beck (2012), semi-structured interview can provide rich and detailed information during phenomenon study. In this study, a phenomenological approach was used to described the aim of the research. It is to understand the experiences of diabetic patients