Summary: Journey To A Natural Birth
Journey To a Natural Birth
The article, “Women’s use of complementary and alternative medicine: a Journey to normal birth” by Mary Mitchell seeks to dive into the motivations of why many women choose to go the route of using complementary and alternative medicine rather than the traditional route of using epidurals, cesarean section and other medical interventions. In order to go about this, Mitchell and a group of researchers at the University of West England gathered a group of fourteen women who have used at least one form of CAM method during their pregnancy or their childbirth. Mitchell and her peers used a narrative method to collect information from participants of the study. The narrative method can be defined as a form of observational research, where information is gathered to analyze collected data through and writing and reporting through storytelling (Ethnography, Observational Research and Narrative Inquiry). …show more content…
In this study, there were 14 participants. Fourteen participants in a research study is a relatively small sample. A sample size of at least 30 is often suggested, but even up to 500 participants would be an appropriate number of participants to get involved in a research study. Such small samples leave room for a margin of error and statistically insignificant results. This study can be improved by adding more participants to the study between 30 and 500, to have more reliable and statistically significant results (The Importance of Quality Sample Size ). This study should have also included a more clear identification of what exactly a CAM is, and account for the effect of the different types of CAM methods used with pregnant women, listing patterns, benefits and complications women experienced with
The article, “Women’s use of complementary and alternative medicine: a Journey to normal birth” by Mary Mitchell seeks to dive into the motivations of why many women choose to go the route of using complementary and alternative medicine rather than the traditional route of using epidurals, cesarean section and other medical interventions. In order to go about this, Mitchell and a group of researchers at the University of West England gathered a group of fourteen women who have used at least one form of CAM method during their pregnancy or their childbirth. Mitchell and her peers used a narrative method to collect information from participants of the study. The narrative method can be defined as a form of observational research, where information is gathered to analyze collected data through and writing and reporting through storytelling (Ethnography, Observational Research and Narrative Inquiry). …show more content…
In this study, there were 14 participants. Fourteen participants in a research study is a relatively small sample. A sample size of at least 30 is often suggested, but even up to 500 participants would be an appropriate number of participants to get involved in a research study. Such small samples leave room for a margin of error and statistically insignificant results. This study can be improved by adding more participants to the study between 30 and 500, to have more reliable and statistically significant results (The Importance of Quality Sample Size ). This study should have also included a more clear identification of what exactly a CAM is, and account for the effect of the different types of CAM methods used with pregnant women, listing patterns, benefits and complications women experienced with