Evaluación del desempeño del talento humano

The survey questionnaire (Appendix 5) was emailed to all pre-registration physiotherapy students between July 2012 and September 2012. The

questionnaire was accompanied by the participant information letter (Appendix 3) with an invitation for them to consider volunteering for a subsequent interview. The students were asked to complete the attached questionnaire and return either via email or by leaving a printed copy in my pigeon hole in reception. An additional email reminder was sent at the end of September.

A questionnaire used in previous studies into neurophobia for medical students (Schon et al 2002 and Flanagan et al 2007) was adapted to suit Physiotherapy students in this research (Appendix 5). A copy of the questionnaire used by Flanagan et al (2007) has been provided in Appendix 6 so that it is clear to see how the questionnaire was adapted to suit the physiotherapy student population and to encourage more qualitative justification of responses. One important change required was a reduction in the range of subjects taught. The medical questionnaire (Appendix 6) included eight areas of practice whereas my

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physiotherapy questionnaire included just three core areas of practice. Questions 2,4,5,7 and 8 in the Flanagan et al (2007) questionnaire were adapted in this way and used within this research questionnaire. Question 2 and 6 in the Flanagan et al (2007) questionnaire were not included because with only three areas of practice it would be clear to see in the responses to the other questions the comparison of levels of interest and difficulty. There were also some minor changes to the phrasing of questions to aid comprehension and requests to add additional comments if they wished after each question. Question 5 in the research questionnaire was very similar to question 8 in the Flanagan et al (2007)

questionnaire, although the options provided were also informed by the literature review. Question 6 in the research questionnaire was left open for students to suggest what could help overcome any difficulties, which is quite different to question 9 in the Flanagan et al (2007) questionnaire where the focus is which teaching strategies were perceived to improve competency. The questionnaire sent out to all 110 pre-registration physiotherapy students (70 BSc students and 40 MSc students) studying at the participating HEI.

It had not been my intention to use a survey questionnaire when my initial interest in exploring student physiotherapists’ experiences of learning neurology began. However, once I had reviewed the available literature, it became apparent that in order to place my case study research in the field of previous research this method would provide valuable links, as it had been the preferred data collection method in the majority of the medical studies looking into neurophobia. This pragmatic decision to use questionnaires as a means to place the case study results in the context of the neurophobia literature resulted in the mixed methods approach. Denzin (1989) would describe the approach adopted in this research as ‘between method triangulation’ as it involves the use of two distinct methodological

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approaches for data collection. In this research, a quantitative descriptive questionnaire was utilised to generate a profile of the presence of neurophobia across the group of neurological physiotherapy students. The questionnaire did have some more qualitative open questions built in too. The qualitative follow up interviews gathered in-depth individual student’s experiences and ideas about learning neurological physiotherapy. It is considered that the data collected was complimentary, particularly as the interview discussions were in part directed by the questionnaire results. Each of the methods looked at different aspects in answering the research questions to make use of strengths of this method. This has been identified as one beneficial use of combining different methodological methods (Sim & Wright 2000).

As confirmed above, a mixed method or triangulation approach in this study has been chosen in order to answer the nature and scope of the particular research aims. To quote Depoy & Giltin’s (cited in Sim & Sharp 1998 p27) clarification, the triangulation in this research is not ‘triangulation for confirmation’ but ‘confirmation for completeness’, in order to answer the research aims fully and discuss in light of previous research. Richie & Lewis (2003) also identify that it is appropriate to utilise qualitative methods following a survey in order to seek a greater

understanding of the factors underlying a problem, in this case neurophobia.

The questionnaire design used closed questions accompanied by open questions; this was to ensure a speedy completion of fixed replies when seeking appropriate factual and attitudinal information but also allowed the respondents the freedom to express their ideas, outside of the constraints of pre-set answers (Oppenheim 1992). Had I have chosen to develop a new questionnaire, rather than adapting an established questionnaire, I would have changed the questions into statements and used a likert scale to measure the levels of agreement and attitude (Sim &

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Wright 2000). The use of likert type scales is a common method in measuring attitude, although not relevant for this research, the controversy regarding whether these yield ordinal or interval data is noted (Jamieson 2004).

The questionnaire adopted 4 questions using a 5 level response to the question linked to different categories, similar to a likert scale although they were not levels of agreement. The 5th question had 3 level response options, each of which was followed by an open response opportunity to qualify or expand on the fixed responses. See appendix 5 for a copy of the questionnaire.

The questionnaire was administered via email and responses were sent via email or posted into my work pigeon hole on site. An email reminder was sent out, which is an example of good practice in an attempt to increase the response rate

(Oppenhiem1992).

The results of the questionnaires were analysed using descriptive statistics, the results of which can be found in Chapter 4. The results were ultimately analysed in conjunction with the findings from the interviews and observations in order to answer the research questions.