Investigating the Supporting System for Mental Health Patients in Paid Employment

This study aims to investigate the supporting system that supports people with mental health problems to remain in paid employment. It will analyze the association between mental health and unemployment and how mental health patients can be best supported to remain in paid employment.

INVESTIGATING THE SUPPORTING SYSTEM THAT SUPPORT PEOPLE
WITH MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS TO REMAIN IN PAID EMPLOYMENT
Quantitative Proposal

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ABSTRACT
The primary aim of this study is to execute an investigation over determining the supporting
system that support people with mental health issues to remain in paid employment, thus, the
scope of this analysis is wide as it defined as the key issue of unemployment among mental
health patients has become an increasing public health concern across the globe. Thus, the
following proposal is aimed towards analysing the supporting system that enable people with
mental health problems to remain in the paid employment. In order to achieve this aim, the
research intends to adopt quantitative research design. Quantitative research design will allow
researcher to develop knowledge and understanding regarding the association between mental
health and unemployment and how mental health patients can be best supported to remain in
paid employment on the basis of objective and statistical findings. The researcher will collect
primary data through using survey questionnaire as a research instrument and time required to
complete the research will be six months. The reason for selecting survey questionnaire in this
research is that it is a convenient and reliable way to gather and analyse responses of the
participants regarding the practices or actions that allow people with mental health problems to
remain in paid employment. The research participants that intend to include in this research will
be 100 mental health providers working in an organisations located in London, UK. The mental
health providers will be selected on the basis of judgemental sampling as it allows researcher to
select participants on the basis of professional judgement and knowledge.

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Research Question...............................................................................................................4
Research Plan.......................................................................................................................4
Introduction......................................................................................................................4
Research Philosophy/Theoretical Perspective.................................................................4
Research Design/Methodological Choice........................................................................5
Methods of Data Collection.............................................................................................7
Sampling and Sample Size Access and Recruitment......................................................8
Participants Information..................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................9
References..........................................................................................................................11

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Research Question
Q. In what ways can people with mental health issues optimally be supported in paid
employment?
Research Plan
Introduction
The problem of mental health is considered an acute threat for the employment. It has
been observed that the people with the mental health issues are more likely to encounter physical
health problems, be overweight and bad habits, such as taking drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol,
avoid education, take time off work, even involve in criminal activities. Poor mental health is not
only associated with the person, but it involves human, societal and economic cost as well. It has
been inferred in the study of Fiori et al. (2016).) that unemployment further exacerbates the issue
of mental health, and the negative impacts of unemployment on individuals are well-
documented. There is high risk of mental health issues, such as distress, depression and anxiety
in the people that are unemployed.
There are evidences related to the damaging effects of unemployment right after
redundancy. Redundancy causes poor financial conditions, which leads to lowered living
standards and reduced self-esteem, and health damaging behavior are promoted, such as
unhealthy diet and physical inactivity. Thus, it is imperative that a supporting system ought to be
provided to these people so they can remain in paid employment. Given that fulfilling job can be
good for their mental health and generate well-being (Buffel, Missinne & Bracke, 2017).
In this section, research plan to conduct this study has been discussed and expounded,
and justification has been provided that why the quantitative measures are optimal choice for the
study. This section has focused on theoretical perspective, research design and methodology,
methods of data collection, sampling size and techniques and information of participants.
Research Philosophy/Theoretical Perspective
A set of assumptions about reality through which the question is informed is considered
as a theoretical perspective. There is the great importance of theoretical perspective in every

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research as the thoughts and ideas are organised by it. Research philosophies and theoretical
perspective are associated with each other, and research philosophy is considered a belief
through which the data about the phenomenon is obtained (Thornhill, Saunders & Lewis, 2009).
Therefore, to acquire knowledge, the approach that is employed by a researcher is known as
research philosophy and theoretical perspective. Positivism, interpretivism, pragmatism and
realism are considered the four major types of research philosophies (Sapkota, 2019). Positivism
mainly incorporates over quantifiable observations which aid to statistical evaluation as in this
information is based on quantifiable aspects, thus, it has been said that “as a philosophical
choice, positivism is in harmony with the empiricist view which acknowledge idea through
human experience (Klakegg, 2016).
As the study is intended to investigate the supporting system that supports people with a
mental problem to remain in paid employment (Ryan, 2018). Another important reason to use
this philosophy is that the researcher is intended to conduct survey form health providers
working in organisations located in London so he could know in how many organisations there is
a supporting system provided for such employees. Therefore, this factual knowledge can be
obtained through positivism philosophy that will be based on facts and figures obtained by
asking people about their behaviours, intentions and awareness (Žukauskas, Vveinhardt &
Andriukaitienė, 2018). In addition to this, by using this philosophy, the researcher will also be
able to analyse patterns and trends.
In addition to the above information, there are various efforts and procedure will be put in
place by the researchers to assure the quality of data. As in the present study, the research will
obtain data from survey questionnaire, therefore, to ensure the quality of the instrument, data
survey monitoring will be conducted by the researcher (Sebesta et al., 2018). Therefore, the
researcher will evaluate the performance of the participants who will be filling the questionnaire.
This quality-control aspect will be ensured by the researcher to minimise survey related
measurement errors as it will enable him to comprehend wherein the survey mistake can be made
(McLaughlin et al., 2020).
Research Design/Methodological Choice
Research design is a framework within which research is taken place (Cooper, 2018). In
the present study, there will be a quantitative research design used as it is appropriate with the

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nature of the study. Here are different type of primary quantitative research like survey research,
correlation, casual comparative research and experimental research, in this present research
survey will termed to be the most effective tool to gather primary information, thus survey
mainly defined to be the most applied tool for quantitative research, therefore, in this questions
are being asked to a sample of participants in different aspects like online polls, online surveys,
paper questionnaires, web-intercept surveys, etc. here are two sort of surveys, either of that can
be selected based on the time in-hand and the kind of data required:
Cross-sectional surveys: This surveys is observational in nature which are executed in situations
where the researcher intends to gather information through a sample of the selected population at
a given point in time.
Longitudinal surveys: This surveys are also known as observational surveys but, unlike cross-
sectional surveys, longitudinal surveys are basically implemented around assorted time durations
to observe a change in individual’s behaviour and thought-processes in relation to a specified
area.
In the present research, the researcher has intended to include 100 participants, therefore,
reaching all the participants by employing qualitative research design is quite a formidable task.
However, by employing quantitative research design with the help of using questionnaire higher
sample size can easily be reached (Crane et al., 2017). Thus, this is one of the most important
reasons to use this research design. Apart from this, another important motivation behind using
this design is that the researcher will have only six months to conduct this research, however, this
amount of time is very limited to conduct this kind of study because the researcher will be
required to collect the data from employees that are working in different organizations of
London, which is a very time-consuming task.
Therefore, by using a quantitative research design, the information can be collected
quickly by the researcher in real-time scenarios, and statistical analysis can be conducted by him
immediately. Moreover, the identification of variables to produce results is not required in
quantitative research and it is a straightforward process to implement, and hence, a great amount
of researcher’s time will be saved (Morgan, 2017; Price & Lovell, 2018). Furthermore, cross-
sectional studies are appropriate for studies that focus on healthcare, and hence, the assessment
of burden of disease or health needs of the population can be assessed by cross-sectional studies
(Corroon, Mischley & Sexton, 2017).

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On the basis of above information, the use of this design will allow the researcher to
ensure better accuracy and greater objectivity of the results. Besides, the research can reach
greater number of health providers, and these are the main strengths of this design. While, there
are some weakness as well that will cause problem for the research, such as due to numerical
descriptions rather than detailed narrative, results will be limited. Moreover, it can cause difficult
in developing research model (Morgan, 2017; Price & Lovell, 2018).
Methods of Data Collection
Data collection mainly emphasis over primary and secondary tools, thus both primary
and secondary sources can be used to accumulate data. However, in the present study, the data
will be accumulated by the researcher form primary sources by using the instrument of the
questionnaire. There are different sort of questionnaires like structured, unstructured and quasi
structured questioners, thus the explanation is determined as below:
Structured Questionnaire: This mainly involves pre coded questions through well organized
skipping patterns to follow the sequence of questions, therefore, most of the quantitative analysis
operational are concern over using structured questionnaire to generate accurate outcome.
Unstructured Questionnaire: This mainly involved open ended and vague opinion questions,
therefore, in this questions may not be in the format of interrogative sentences and the moderator
or the enumerator has to be determined the sense of the question.
Quasi structured Questionnaire: This is the mixture of structured and unstructured
questionnaire therefore, it is a most common and pragmatic practice in which most questions are
in structured format.
For considering an appropriate study based on investigation over determining the
supporting system that support people with mental health issues to remain in paid employment,
quasi structured questioners will termed to be the most significant tool to gather information
thus, there are various reasons that have prodded the researcher to collect data from this source.
As in this information will mainly effectively be gathered through likert questions in which
options are categorized among strongly agree, agree, strongly disagrees and disagree. Besides, it
is suggested by Banerjee (2019) that through the help of primary data collection, topic-specific
insights can be obtained by researchers, which will enable the researcher to resolve specific
research issues.

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It has opined by Sun and Lipsitz, (2018) in his study that by employing primary methods,
the researcher can collect the exact information from the participants what he wants. This
process will not take longer time as in this information accumulation is easy via distributing the
questioners to the participants and gather information effectively.
Sampling and Sample Size Access and Recruitment
In the present study, the selected sample size will be 100. All the participants of the study
will be health providers from different organizations of the UK, thus In this male and female
both the participants are involved from the age group of 18 to 45 as this is the suitable age group
to gather information as people from this age segment are engaged in assorted organisational
activities. The researcher will target the health providers because profound insights can be
obtained from them about steps and initiative that are taken by occupational health services
or professionals to support organisations in helping people with mental issue to remain in paid
employment (Etikan, Alkassim & Abubakar, 2016).
The research will be conducted in occupational health organisations or hospice where
different health providers are working. The data will be collected within the organisations, and
for this purpose, there will be proper announcement made to ensure highly participative
collection, which will help participants to quickly realise and accept the need for the collection.
The management of these organisations will be provided a brief about the aim and objectives of
the research. Besides, the researcher will inform what will be expected from the participants
during the collection. The researcher will also review useful document before contacting.
The data will be collected from July 2020 to September 2020 and survey questionnaire
will be adopted by the researcher as an instrument to collect data. The researcher will visit 2
organisations each data from July to September to survey the health providers. The time that will
be allocated for the survey is 20 minutes. The time horizon that will be taken in the study is
based on a cross-sectional study, which means that at a specific point in time, the data will be
analysed by the researcher. Besides, for the collection of data, the self-report questionnaire will
be adopted by the researcher, and the reliability value of the questionnaire will be checked by
conducting reliability testing through Cronbach alpha (Corroon, Mischley & Sexton, 2017).
There will be two sections in the questionnaire, such as A and B. In addition to this, all the

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questions in questionnaire will be close-ended, and the questionnaire will be based on 5 points
Likert Scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
In this present analysis, only those healthcare providers will be selected in the study that
is permeant employees. In addition to this, the participant that have less than 4 years of
experience of health providing will not be considered as they would not have enough knowledge
about the sector and its support system for employees with mental health.
Participants Information
The population of this study will be health providers working in different organizations in
London. There will be 100 participants will be recruited in the study, out of them, 50 will be
males and the other 50 will be females. The researcher will employ equal criteria to avoid
biasness in the study. The age of participants will be between 18 to 45 years. Besides, the
participant that will be below the age of 18 or above the age of 45 will not be considered in the
study. The reason is that the participants of below the age of 18 will not be fully matured and
will have lack of experience of health providing, while the participants of above the age of 45 are
usually retired, therefore, most recent insight cannot be obtained by them.
There will be a use of purposive sampling technique by the researcher to collect the
sample. The reason to use this sampling technique is that it will enable the researcher to provide
an equal chance to all the participants, which will help to enhance the accuracy of data
collection. The reason is that all the participants will be provided 50/50 opportunity (Serra,
Psarra & O'Brien, 2018). Furthermore, it will provide convenience and simplicity to the process
of data collection. Additionally, the chances of error will greatly be minimised by the sampling
process as the sampling will have occurred within the specific boundaries (Etikan, Musa &
Alkassim, 2016)
Conclusion
In sum, there will a quantitative research design used in the study. The positivism
philosophy will be employed by the researcher and the data will be collected through
questionnaire. The selected will be 100 and the researcher will use non-probability convenience
sampling technique as he will have limited time and budget to conduct the study, therefore, this

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will help to save time and cost of the researcher and provide him convenience in the process of
data collection.The quality of questionnaire will be ensured by the researcher through using data
survey monitoring. Therefore, the researcher will evaluate the performance of the participants
who will be filling the questionnaire. Moreover, the researcher will use cross-sectional study as it
is appropriate for studies that focus on healthcare, and hence, the assessment of burden of disease
or health needs of the population can be assessed by it. The research will be conducted at hospice
and the participants of the research will health providers.

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