Reference no: EM132257605

Brief

Mental health services in many countries are increasingly creating peer worker roles. Peer workers are usually people who themselves have experience of mental health problems and wish to provide support to patients. Peer workers can work within mental healthcare organisations in a variety of ways, and provide a range of benefits to both patients and co- workers.

A project is being run to assess the potential benefits and barriers to the introduction of peer workers to a mental healthcare Trust in England. The Trust provides a wide range of mental health services to a large and diverse urban population.

You have been asked to design a qualitative research project that will help the Trust understand what the introduction of Peer Workers could offer to service users. There is a need to identify:

• What service users know about Peer Workers
• Potential benefits of Peer Workers for service users
• Any concerns or risks amongst service users regarding Peer Workers
• Any other relevant information that could help the Trust decide whether to develop ?Peer Worker roles, and what form these roles could take ?You have 6 months to design and run the trial and will have support from two experienced Research Assistants.

The Task

You are to design a qualitative research project, on behalf of the Trust, to address the issues described in the Overview above. Please do this by providing answers to the questions below using the Template document. ?An example answer is provided in the Assessments section. Note that there may be slight differences in the questions within the example compared to the questions below.
Consider the following questions:

1. What is your overarching research aim (purpose statement) and principal research ?question or objective? (200 words) Please include:?
• Overarching research aim (purpose statement)?
• Study objective/research question

2. Explain your sampling approach. Who are your participants likely to be? Why have you chosen these participants? What insights do you expect from the data they provide and how will these inform your research objective? (300 words)

3. What research design would be most appropriate? Please include which data collection methods you would use, and why. Explain why you believe this to be the most appropriate study design. How will you ensure reliability, validity of the study. What limitations does this study have.Also discuss timelines for your study. (700 words)