Inductive And Deductive

A formative evaluation of a family-based walking intervention - Furness ...

The family unit may be an important mechanism for increasing physical activity levels, yet little is known about what types of family-based interventions are effective. This study involved a formative evaluation of a 12 week intervention to encourage walking as a family based activity.

The intervention consisted of several key elements including led walks and tailored resources, as well as remote support provided via the telephone. The project aimed to explore factors associated with successful delivery of the programme and to identify areas of improvement for future implementation.

Methods: A total of nine interviews were undertaken with programme staff who were involved in either the set up or delivery of the intervention.

In addition, four interviews and two focus groups were undertaken with participants to explore their experiences of the programme. The analysis involved both deductive and inductive reasoning.

Results: In total, 114 people participated in the programme, which included 36 adults, 10 adolescents and 68 children ([less than or equal to]10 years of age).

Adult participants reported several barriers to walking including concerns over their children's behaviour and their ability to maintain 'control'of their children. Walking in a group with other families gave parents confidence to go out walking with their children and provided a valuable opportunity for social interaction for parents and children alike.

The most successful walks incorporated specific destinations and an activity to undertake upon reaching the destination. Incorporating other activities along the way also helped to keep the children engaged.

Conclusions: The results of this study have highlighted the important contribution that formative research can make in informing and refining a programme to increase appropriateness and effectiveness.

The study has helped to highlight the key characteristics associated with delivering a successful walking intervention to young families. It is recommended that practitioners undertake formative research when developing novel health promotion initiatives to help refine the programme protocols.

The First Review of Monograph on Paul « nijay k gupta

 Reviews are quite short, but Dr. Heath did invest quite  a bit of time and space in this review, and for that I am thankful. She offers praise and criticism, but overall I felt she found the work disappointing. I thought I would take a chance to process her analysis and provide some reflections of my own on her review.

First of all, it is a very humbling thing to read someone criticize your own work in print. This has made me more cautious and circumspect when I write reviews, online or in print. This is all-the-more important when it comes to short reviews when you don’t have the space to flesh out the criticism and support it.

Below I will paraphrase or quote from Dr. Heath’s review, and then offer my own responses.

She begins this way: “This revised dissertation reads like a PhD thesis that is ambitious and full of ideas, but never quite shakes itself free of the faults characteristic of the genre, such as a lapidary structure, a plethora of obfuscatory theories, and overdetermined conclusions…”

Wow. I think she is getting at the point that I fell into the trap of many dissertations of my research being over-ambitious, but I think her own remarks are overdrawn. From my dissertation, I published something like 5-6 articles in order to safeguard my dissertation from precisely what Heath suggests – and with good journals such as The Catholic Biblical Quarterly . She certainly must also recognize that this went through quite an academic process, beginning with the supervision of John Barclay and Stephen Barton, passed through Simon Gathercole and Francis Watson, and was “accepted” into the BZNW series. I am not trying to pat myself on the back. I am simply pointing out that dissertation monographs, by virtue of their process of development, deserve some respect for things like “discipline-standard” quality. Also, I looked up “lapidary” in three different dictionaries and I still don’t know what it means metaphorically (even OED doesn’t have a figurative use listed for it – unless she means I get excited about rocks). Prepare, Succeed, Advance , is that there are two main approaches to major studies – inductive and deductive (as I learned from D.A. Carson). Inductive studies make one major point and work full-force to prove it. Deductive studies seek to flesh out a theme or concept or idea, and conclusions may be numerous. You simply must report your findings. You want it to be original, but you must not try to force it into anything it is not. For Heath to question my work as essentially unwieldly is, I think, to give “deductive” expectations to an “inductive” study. I wonder what Heath might say about P.T.