Psychology – Parenting stress in families of children with ADHD – Metodology IPA

Suggestions for improvement below:

Title: It would be great to incorporate something which reflects your IPA methodology in the title. So perhaps something like ‘Exploring the lived experience of parenting a child with a diagnosis of ADHD’.

Introduction:
– You need references for the paragraph in which you talk about the genetic link.
– You need to provide a date for the McCubbin reference.
– In your research question, you refer to “ADHD children” – just be mindful to word your writing sensitively – this would read much better as ‘children with a diagnosis of ADHD’.

2.1
– IPA doesn’t aim to clarify a ‘link’ ?
– You say that the approach is relevant for this qual study – I’m not sure what this sentence means and why you have referenced someone at the end of it? The approach is the qual study – did you mean IPA is the correct qual methodology, or the qual IPA methodology is appropriate for the research question?
Your aim here is to explain why qual and why IPA – expand upon your focus on the lived, subjective experience.

2.2
– If you are using your own social media pages, you do not need permission.
– You need to actually write out your recruitment advertisement verbatim on your ethics form. What exactly will you say?
– For your rationale for recruiting 6 participants, it would be good to include an IPA reference – i.e. somewhere in the literature where it says that 6 is a suitable number for this level of research.
– Why is the period since receiving the diagnosis important? Do participants need to have received the diagnosis a certain amount of time ago? How did you decide upon parents must have lived with the child for at least 2 years?
– Have you considered any other exclusion criteria? For example – have you thought about if parents have a formal mental health diagnosis? The topic you are discussing is of a sensitive nature – parents with a formal mental health diagnosis may be at higher risk of potentially experiencing distress as a result of taking part?

2.3
– It would be good to refer to the interview schedule which you have added as an appendix, in this section.
– You will also need a recorder and given the current circumstances, a laptop/computer to conduct an online interview – you need to outline this.
– I’m not sure what you mean by ‘online interview schedule technique’? My understanding is you will use a software such as Zoom or Skype to conduct interviews online?

2.4
– I’m not sure what you mean by ‘ethically- oriented’?
– You need to outline your procedure in greater detail – what will you do every step of the way? This includes from recruitment, all the way through.

2.5
– The title of your study needs to be consistent throughout. The title written here appears different to the one at the start of the form and the one on the debrief form.
– Make sure you fill in the name of investigator/supervisor sections.
– What is a ‘simulation session’?
– In the consent form you need to outline much more clearly how you will protect participants confidentiality – i.e. data protection act, using pseudonyms, anonymisation etc. You also need to clearly state the participant’s right to withdraw without any consequence to them and without having to explain why.
– Participants will not be “sent” a debrief, participants will be debriefed – explain what this means.

2.6
– Make sure you fill in the name/email of investigator/supervisor sections.

2.8
– The first question may be better placed slightly later in the interview when some rapport has been developed – it is a very exploratory, open-ended question.
– You have put bullet points but then included several questions for each bullet point – these are all separate questions.
– Be careful with your wording throughout:
Bullet point 3 – the second question – I think you may have missed a word/words out here as I’m not sure it makes sense as it stands?
Bullet point 3 – the fourth question – This needs to be worded much more sensitively, don’t refer to “the kid” and “needed some help” is assumptive.
Bullet point 4 – Who is “beloved one” referring to? I think this is ambiguous?
Bullet point 6 – It is assumptive to refer to the child as “him”