Page 164 - THE DUTCH TALKING TOUCH SCREEN QUESTIONNAIRE

Chapter 4
to participate in this study [43]. This hypothesis is reinforced by the fact that, although recruitment was done in twelve different physical therapy practices, eight out of ten participants were recruited in the practice where researcher SH was employed.
The positive effect researcher SH had on the sampling procedure may also have had a downside. In spite of all efforts of the researchers to inform potential participants thoroughly and make sure that participation was done voluntarily, the authority of researcher SH as researcher and physical therapist [43] may have caused participants to agree to participate too quickly without really foreseeing what was being asked of them. The majority of the participants seemed to have ‘a lot on their plate’ and were therefore not able to entirely focus on their tasks during the data collection process. Eight out of ten participants reported multiple health problems. One participant even ended the interview prematurely because it became too much for her due to her physical and mental state. Another participant, who reported eleven different kinds of health problems, told the researchers that his biggest problem was not even his health status but his poor financial situation. In hindsight, the researchers got the impression that, for some, participation in this study may have been too much to ask.
The bilingual research setting also brought some limitations to this study. Apart from the translation lengthening the completion time, three participants forgot to insert some of their answers during the completion process, while they did formulate their answers when thinking out loud. They all said they would not have forgotten this in a ‘real life’ physical therapy setting where there would have been no observers or interpreters present and they would not have been asked to think out loud. Three other participants said that the translation limited their ability to concentrate on their task and thoughts. This may have caused participants to make more mistakes than they would have done had the whole interview been in the Turkish language.
Comparison with prior work
Although there is a considerable amount of overlap in the kind and severity of problems encountered in the current and Dutch TTSQ study [20], the participants of the current study encountered different kinds of problems and were less able to complete the questionnaire fully
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