Question: Write 350-450 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments.
This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
The discussion assignment for this week will be a review of the Key Assignment Draft from other students. Your first task is to post your draft to the discussion area so that other students will be able to review your work. Attach your document to your main discussion post, and include any notes that you feel are appropriate in the post. You are not being graded on your Key Assignment Draft at this point. The purpose of this assignment is to help improve the quality of your Key Assignment.
You should then Review at least 2 other students draft report and provide meaningful feedback. Refrain from generic feedback, such as simply stating "good job." Your feedback to other students will be most helpful if you not only point out weak areas but also offer suggestions for improvement. The best feedback takes a three-stage approach to identify what was done well, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
First peer draft report
"Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) comes in many forms for many different people. Soldiers are by far one of the most susceptible when it comes to PTSD especially if they are from combat arms (not discounting emergency responders or law enforcement). This study involves a researcher examining soldiers to determine if they experience greater trauma helping Americans in a time of crisis than they would on a battle field. There are a couple of factors that must be considered when researching an issue of this magnitude. While quantitative research is valuable like data collection after a survey, however in this scenario qualitative data will make the research much more accurate. An additional technique that could be used is a color CT brain scan. This type of scan lights up opioid receptor in the brain linked to emotion and shows activity if soldiers are suffering from PTSD when shown specific images (Dallas, 2014). This type of qualitative data can be used to narrow down how affected soldiers are by working in situations like hurricane Katrina as opposed to combat operations.
More information needs to be gathered to ensure she is using the proper tools. Some questions that could be as are: "did the soldier serve in a combat role?", "What was the extent of their combat role?", and "Was the soldier injured while serving in a combat position and what where the extent of his injuries?" This type of information can be collected with the methods the researcher has developed. This is critical information, because not all soldiers that serve overseas suffer from PTSD and the ones that do have different variations. The researcher could narrow the field by examining soldiers that served in similar roles overseas as they did during the humanitarian effort of hurricane Katrina, such as medics or search and rescue personnel. Although surveys can be conducted to gather the initial information, the researcher is definitely on the right track with follow up personal interviews.
There is a lot of assumption when it comes to PTSD, the first of which is that everyone that deploys overseas serves in a combat role, and therefore must have PTSD. However, this is not the case although everyone is changed when they return from a combat zone. Another assumption is that soldiers will likely be more compassionate thus suffering stronger emotion that will develop into PTSD if they work with Americans as opposed to another country. Additionally, there is an assumption that a soldier will show signs of PTSD soon after he returns from combat, however many soldiers go undiagnosed for years until something triggers an event. This leads into the challenge that the researcher may face during her study.
There are many areas that effect PTSD like, behavior, spirituality, and the psychological state. All of these areas can pose a challenge to the researcher's data simply because of the human factor. An example is someone that is spiritually motivated or has strong spiritual beliefs "aspects of spirituality are associated with positive outcomes, even when trauma survivors develop psychiatric difficulties such as PTSD" (U.S Department of Vetrans Affairs, 2016). There are also instances of race and poverty level that can affect a soldier because of childhood trauma which can trigger a form of PTSD not related to the study.
References
Dallas, M. E. (2014, September 19). PTSD symptoms light up specific parts of brain. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from CBSNEWS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ptsd-symptoms-light-up-specific-parts-of-brain/
U.S Department of Vetrans Affairs. (2016, January 20). Spirituality and Trauma: Professionals Working Together. Retrieved January 20, 2016, from PTSD: National Center for PTSD: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/provider-type/community/fs-spirituality.asp"
Second Peer Report
"In the Given scenario, the researcher plans on making a comparison of PTSD evaluations involving members of the 82nd Airborne Division soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq with those that were employed in clean up and recovery operations following Hurricane Katrina. The researcher intends to do so by distributing and collecting a questionnaire with number variable questions and follow up interviews.
The premise of comparing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder effects on a designated element following exposure to two different environments is a valid one. The utilization of a questionnaire, just as the utilization of interviewing are both valid tools to conduct research, though in utilizing the questionnaires, there are elements that will not be present like they are in personally conducted and monitored interviews.
Human physiology can provide immeasurable amounts of data that strictly answered questions cannot. Military members are taught Tactical questioning. This is a noninvasive method of retrieving information by not only asking questions but observing the interviewee's physiological responses for truthfulness and potential clues. This is one of the base line tenants of Human Intelligence collection (HUMINT), which can readily be applied to research methodology. Another invaluable resource would be to examine the after action reports from both locations involving the subjects to be researched. The military is very stringent in its requirements that all operations conducted be followed by reporting of all events and facts in the operation. This would give the researcher an external documented concept of what those individuals experienced
There are some potentially revealing elements of information the researcher is missing. The first that comes to mind is the specific guidelines of the PTSD levels of the individual. As a veteran, in constant contact with the Veterans Administration over the issues that I have, I am well aware of the signs and symptoms of both Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), PTSD, and their similarities and differences, as well as their varying stages of functionality. Specific guidelines should be established as to the level of PTSD suffered by the research subjects. Another pertinent piece of information missing from her targeting group involves involvement of those service members in both locations., could the result of both incidents have compounded each other or was the PTSD onset by one event and exacerbated by the other or vice versa?
The researcher is making the assumption that both the Katrina aftermath and the battlefield environment in foreign locations are equal to each other. This assumption is both far too broad and at the same time naive. Though individuals operating in post Katrina New Orleans and the surrounding area had to deal with recovery of the dead and the remote possibility of fighting looters, to compare that experience to the ever-present threat of death by combat or hidden explosive device in a foreign country far from home. To make a closer comparison, the researcher may want to exclude service members who were active in the combat zone outside of the security of the Forward operations Base. Individuals holding administrative and or support titles, and medical personnel that dealt with injured and or dying service members may be a stronger equivalent sample for the study.
Service members with PTSD are often very tight lipped about their experiences and or do not wish to address what they saw regardless of the reason. This may present a significant stumbling block to this research. Though it may reduce the number of research subjects, the researcher may wish to ask for volunteers.
References:
Guerilla America. Community Defense Framework. Samuel Culper III. The Basics of HUMINT Collection: Tactical Questioning 2013. Retrieved from: https://guerrillamerica.com/2013/07/the-basics-of-humint-collection-tactical-questioning/
United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Health Care. PTSD: National Center for PTSD 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/"