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Accuracy of Research - food for thought

Hello Ladies

I know we all get heated in various discussions about research and how our delightful babies are affected when one does something different to yourself (myself included) but I thought I would post this as food for thought -

I am currently part of a study with me and DS1 (have been for 6 years) its with regards to cardi vascular disease and diabetes (sp?) would help if I could spell lol thank goodness thats not what the study is about lol

Any way last week we had our last round of bloods, tests etc etc and have been wearing 'activity monitors' for the past 6 days and I have extensive food questionnairs, activity questionnaires to complete.

Yesterday I forgot to put mine on (row with oh took up most of the morning so forgot) Forgot to put it on ds the other morning when he had a full morning of contstant activity in a play place, it has rained for 3 of the days that we have had these on so he has not been able to get out and play and I haven;t been able to get out for my walks...........sssssssssoooooo in my opinion through my own fault too the accuracy of our 6 days is not representative of what we actually do on a day to day basis and the food diary relys totally on me being honest and if I am honest I did consider leaving out the mcdonalds we had on Friday for a treat as I didn't want them to think I was bad LOL but I wi;l put it in.

The point of the post really is that next time we're all 'disputing' we should remember that research is usually conducted on average jo's like my good self who are only human and 'forget' or may want to 'impress' the dr's etc and fudge the forms - not saying in any way at all not to follow guidelines as I mayself do but it really opened my eyes this time round at the hospital as to just how easy it is for results to be skewed and affected.

any way hope you enjoyed my story lol lol have a nice day girls xx

(in the interests of research I have put on a wee letter detailing the days etc I forgot to put the things on and what we did in case this is of some help lol lol)

Replies

  • Haha - thanks for sharing - definitely food for thought! I like to use research and statistics when they suit me and back up my point in debates but tend to ignore it otherwise! :lol:

    I always wonder about the research and evidence about breastfeeding. I breastfed for 9 months and would defend it to anyone as the 'normal' natural thing to do, but how can the evidence take into account all the other factors? e.g - IQ or obesity later in life - how can we know that's down to just breast milk? Maybe a woman who breastfeeds would be more likely to be educated/feed healthy food anyway? Off on a tangent, but just as an example of questioning research rather than blindly accepting it. (if anyone can answer that I am genuinely interested by the way)

    Also, with a lot of studies that come out, when you look to see who paid for it, it's a big pharmaceutical company with a BIG agenda to sell something. So when a study comes out saying the evidence says we should all be giving our babies vitamins look to see who's conducted the study - a big vitamin company?!


    I could waffle about this all day! image
  • Oh and what a shame that akaLadyK is currently somewhere on the M25 on the way to my house so won't see this - I'm sure she would have a ton of things to say about research! :lol:
  • oh yes! A big part of the researches wright up is talking about limitations of the study and confounding variables. Unfortunatly when we hear research reported in the headlines, these are never taken into account, its just the reporters take on it. Qualitative research is very very useful, but only if used properly, quantative research is also useful but has the limitations that the OP has suggested as well as validity issues.

    Ooooo, i feel a mammoth thread coming on!!!

    Em x
  • Interesting post! I think all articles, research should always be taken with a pinch of salt. The very act of writing something introduces bias as the writer themselves has a personal opinion and as hard as they try to be fair, it probably always creeps in.
    Having said that, I work at a big research institution and any GOOD research has bias and false answers factored into the results equation. They have formulas and percentages which take into account which probability of the responses are not entirely true, so they use this to alter results accordingly before publishing. It is of course not an exact science too, but good researchers will try to avoid the situations you mention above! For extremely important research, such as drug testing, theses tests are repeated many times over with different people and until they see if a pattern / average result is formed, they should not be made public xxx
  • Research is an ongoing project...hence guidelines change constantly! A perfect example being my dissertation which disproved a theory that a dissertation from 4 years previous.

    My view is you can only really usefully and meaningfully quote research if you've read the whole paper and understand what it means in full, and that the key phrase is 'research SUGGESTS...'

    Guidelines are useful though, but interpretation is open to change and adaptation as new evidence comes to light.

    Good thread!
  • lol thought youd like it girls, my ds1 is now off swimming with his dad and guess what the activity belt isn't water proof lol!! so it'll look like he's snoozed for an hour instead of working up a sweat at the swimmers!!
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