College research Project

Hello Pacemaker Club,

My name is JJ Dunn and I am a student at the College of the Holy Cross. For my sociology class, I am conducting research about the effects pacemakers and ICDs have on familial relations and life outlooks. Below is a survey of ten questions about life with a pacemaker/ICD. You can post directly to this forum or contact me at jadunn18@g.holycross.edu if you want the responses to be direct. Thanks so much for everyone`s help!!

1). What medical circumstances led to the option of a pacemaker or ICD? Were you hesistant at first with this decision? Who, if anyone, helped you make this decision for an invasive surgery?

2). How, if at all, has your familial role changed since the operation? Has your family treated you differently?

3). What has your everyday life been like since the pacemaker/ ICD has been inserted?

4). Have there been any activities you had to stop because of your device?

5). Has anything unexpected happened as a result of your device?

6). Have you ever feared the possibility of your device failing or the possibility of a shock from the ICD (if applicable)?

7). If so, how has that experience affected your daily routine?

8). What advice would you give to someone else deciding to get a pacemaker or an ICD?

9). Have you experienced a moment in which you had to redefine your life and future goals? If so, explain

10). What does the future look like for you? If you had to stop favorite activities or hobbies, what do you do now to fill the void?

10 Comments

Good point Ian

by Theknotguy - 2015-04-06 03:04:10

For me the PM corrected a negative part of my life and life is much better. I'd be dead otherwise and wouldn't be able to answer the questions.

From the sociology I took in college, the questions should be more neutral versus negative or positive.

Good luck with your questions.

Too negative a bias !

by IAN MC - 2015-04-06 03:04:33

Hi JJ I wish you well with your project , but just an observation that you may wish to consider :-

For most of us, a pacemaker rectifies a cardiac problem which we had ( note the past tense )

Many of your questions seem to work on the assumption that having a pacemaker is a bad thing and you appear to be searching for negative feedback. For the majority of us a pacemaker returns us to normal health.

Other people may disagree but I believe that the emphasis of your questions need adjusting towards the positive effects.

Ian

another assumption

by Tracey_E - 2015-04-06 04:04:33

We don't choose to get them, we get them because we need them. I'll answer the questions, but I agree with the above opinions that many of the questions have quite a negative (and not at all realistic, imo) bias.

Do you want to revise the questions before we send you replies?

research background and understanding

by jadunn18 - 2015-04-06 04:04:44

Thanks so much for the responses! I just want emphasize that these questions are merely guiding points for one to describe his or her experience with the device based on literature I have reviewed for the project. Some of the material described negative experiences, and I wanted to see if some of these experiences are shared themes, as in my life I have seen only positive experiences through loved ones. I am sorry if all the questions come off negative; if you believe they come off negative, that`s great! Let me know why! I`m here for understanding your experiences, not to present a bias or personal agenda. Thanks again for the feedback and I would welcome everyone`s responses to the survey questions and anything else one would want to add. The responses just from the forum already have helped my understanding!

Ok

by Grateful Heart - 2015-04-06 06:04:04


I agree with the others...I will take the survey too.

Good luck with your project.

Grateful Heart

Oops

by Grateful Heart - 2015-04-06 07:04:08


Just saw Sparrow's comments after I entered mine.

I agree about giving out your personal email address. For those concerned, you can answer jadunn's survey by sending a private message through this website, thus protecting your identity/ personal email.

While the questions appear negative, the answers do not have to be....we can turn it around.

I believe when jadunn refers to ICD's, he also means CRT's (often interchangeable).

Jadunn, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Grateful Heart

JJDunn research project.

by trish - 2015-04-06 08:04:31

This appears to be a qualitative research project. Do you have a hypothesis? if so what, Questions as written appear to be leading in addition to having negative connotation. Has your instructor seen and approved this project? Trish (published researcher, university professor and chair of hospital research committee)

Sounds like an Undergrad...

by donr - 2015-04-07 08:04:51

..research paper. Unless it is a topic for a Master's thesis or a PhD dissertation, it ids going to be the project that ate your brain. Far too broad for anything that is "Just another paper" in a 3 credit hour course. To do it justice it would have to be worth credit hours all by its lonesome.

Some suggestions:

1) cut it down to ONE of the two devices. Either the effects of ICD's or PM's - not BOTH. they are that different.

2) Address ONLY one level of familial level in the paper - parent or offspring. The effects & responsibilities for each are significantly different in the dynamic you are facing..

3) Further, focus on a clearer,smaller age group - Child? Teen? Young Adult, young parent, childless parent, Married? unmarried, older & unmarried, etc, etc, etc.

4) Unless you guide the respondents you are going to get so much variation in replies that you cannot categorize & analyze.

5) Another problem that you face is time constraints & collecting data. You need a lot of data from a lot of respondents or your conclusions will be shallow & of questionable validity. Just coming here takes you into a land of negativity - realize that most of us are here because we had problems of some sort and seek answers. I know of no site where everyone is happy as a clam.

6) Face it - you are working on a problem of negativity - otherwise you would NOT have hit on the idea. A priori, you expect the results to be negative. You are going to have a tough time generating a LOT of responses that are positive - mainly because those PM/ICD hosts just meander through life & don't ever talk about having a PM. To quote certain political talk show host - "...there is no such thing as a passionate moderate..."

7) In line w/ all that above, you might want to cast the subject more to the easier data that you can collect - ie. "An Analysis of the Negative Affects on Young, Married, Childless PM (or ICD, but NOT both) Hosts by their Nuclear Families."

8) Realize that my advice is worth exactly what you are paying me for it.

Good luck on your magnum opus.

Donr

Every one of thesecomments was...

by donr - 2015-04-07 10:04:28

.... written in blood, sweat & tears by some 18 yr old student. We are not trying to discourage you, just show you where we have been & explain the thing as we learned the hard way.

The most difficult part is formulating the QUESTION to be answered. It takes a whole bunch of preliminary research & investigation to formulate the Question. Actually, this is what Trish called the HYPOTHESIS. Did you take HS Geometry? Recall that EVERY proof started out w/ a Hpothesis. In Geometry, it was a very stylized statement that took the form "If..............Then..........." Or it could read "Given.......Then..........."

Next come your assumptions. They must be intuitively obvious, but NOT determine the answer. All they do is frame the study & keep it within bounds.

Then comes the data collection. IF you have done a good job w/ the Hypothesis & assumptions, it is easy to formulate questions; well, relatively easy.

Good luck with it.

Donr

Undergrad or not

by AnaLena - 2015-04-07 12:04:18

Trish and Donr pointed out some real problems with the survey questions. I'm at a research university and was quite ready to participate in the survey until I read the questions. The bias is so built in to the questions that it will take a huge number of responses to provide valid data and, as Donr says, a lot of PM/ICD hosts would not be included because they just go about their lives..

Sample problems are notorious for invalidating studies.
The questionnaire needs help and so does providing for anonymity of survey participants. That was the second issue for me. At some universities people use SurveyMonkey to provide the anonymity.

The learning for students begins even as the formulate their projects. Perhaps Jadunn can take some of our observations and craft a much better project.

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