Research Proposal: Psychological Consequences for Retired Saudi Women

This research proposal explores the psychological consequences of retirement on Saudi Arabian women, focusing on the potential impact on their mental health and emotional well-being. It employs a qualitative approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews with a sample of six retired women from both public and private hospitals in Saudi Arabia. The study aims to investigate whether retirement has a significant psychological impact, considering factors such as work experience, social support, and the transition from a professional life to retirement. The proposal outlines the research question, hypothesis, sampling plan, data collection procedure, and analysis plan, emphasizing the use of thematic analysis to interpret the interview data. Ethical considerations, such as informed consent and confidentiality, are also addressed to ensure the integrity of the research process. Desklib offers a wealth of similar academic resources for students.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Title
Emotional Impact of Retired Women in Saudi Arabia
Authors
Research Question
What are the psychological consequences of the retired Saudi Arabian women?
Hypothesis
H0: Retirement does not significant psychological impact on Saudi Arabian Women
H1: Retirement has significant impact on the psychology of the Saudi Arabian Women
The stated hypothesis is non-directional. This is because it does not predict the kind of
effect that exists between the retirement and psychology of the Saudi Arabian Women but the
hypothesis states that there exists a relationship between psychology and retirement among
the Saudi Arabian women.
Sampling Plan
Existing Data
According to the study conducted by Strain et al. (2013), the NFL players who are
retired suffer from significant depressive symptoms with dysfunction in the white matter.
Choi, Stewart and Dewey stated that there are prominent depressive symptoms highlighted
among the middle-aged personnel after their retirement. However, none of the studies
conducted during the last 10 years featuring the mental impact of retired women in Saudi

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Arabia. The results conducted by Al-Mahmoud, Mullen and Spurgeon (2012) stated that
majority of women in Saudi Arabia works as a nursing professionals. This group of
professionals suffers from compassion fatigue and emotional burnout during their service
tenure. Lamadah and Sayed (2014) stated the poor working condition and lack of proper
recognition among the nurses in Saudi Arabia creates a sense of frustration among them.
However, no significant studies are conducted in order to study the mental state of the retired
nursing professionals.
Explanation of existing data
Some data will be used in designing of the survey question of the research and this
will be extracted from the review of the literature. Moreover, the literatures will also be cited
in order to highlight the mental status of the working women professionals in the Saudi
Arabia. The entire research will be based on the confirmatory research format. This will help
to increase the overall reliability of the research.
Data collection procedure
The research will be conducted based on interview with the help of the open-ended
questionnaire. The main sample size of the population will be 6. The interview will be
conducted through face-to-face conversation. The main inclusion criteria that will be used to
selection of the participants of the survey include
1. Gender: Female
2. Professional: Retired
3. Organization service: Both public and privately owned hospitals
4. Tenure of retirement: more than one year

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Both private and public hospital nurses will be selected for the interview process in
order to study if there is a difference in the psychological impact among the government
women employee or non-government women employee. Moreover, Welsh et al. (2014) stated
that very limited number of women in Saudi Arabia is employed. Selecting retired personal
from both privately and publicly hospitals organisation will help to increase the scope of the
probability sampling.
Sampling is defined as a process of selection of the subset of cases for the total
number of units for drawing general conclusions for the entire body of unit. There are two
types of sampling, probability sampling and non-probability sampling (Levy & Lemeshow,
2013). According to Acharya et al. (2013), probability sampling deals with process of random
selection at participants. It is commonly associated with surveys and experimental research
strategies. Thus, sample participants for the survey based questionnaires will be randomly
selected from the one privately owned and public-owned organisation. Szolnoki and
Hoffmann (2013) stated that random sampling enables equal opportunity of each participant
for getting selected for the survey process. Special token of appreciation, in the form of the
financial incentive will be given in order to increase the level of participation among the
selected pool of candidates. The incentive will be provided after the completion of the survey.
Sample Size
The sample size of the interview will be 6.
Sample size rationale
According to Marshall et al. (2013) a sample size below 10 is associated with the
margin of more than 15% of sample error. Thus selecting a sample size of 6 might led to the
generation of biased outcome. On the other hand, sample size of 100 will help to reduce the
margin error further (10%). But 100 participants cannot not be included in the interview due

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to time and financial constrain. However before zeroing down to the final sample size, a
power analysis will be done. Cohen (2013) stated that power analysis is mainly conducted
before the collection of data. The main purpose underlying the process of power analysis is to
assist the researcher in the process of determination of the smallest sample size that will be
feasible in order to detect the effect of a given test and that too under the desired level of
significance.
Stopping rule
After taking the consent from the selected privately and publicly owned organisation,
a sheet of the retired women employee (more than one year) will be extracted for the last 10
years. A mail will be channelized to their personal email Id stating the research topic and the
scope of the research. The 25 employee from privately and publicly owned organisation
(each) who replies back to the mail giving positive response will be selected for the survey.
After getting 6 positive reply, the sampling procedure will be stopped. If any of the elected
participants opted out of the to provide informed consent for the participant of the interview
then the participants will be further elected from the pool to mails which have received
positive reply.
Variables
Manipulated variables
The main manipulated variable in this research will be independent variable that is
psychological impact (Bloomfield, Nelson and Soltes, 2016). However no significant
manipulation will be done in the domain of the independent variable. The independent
variable that is the psychological impact of the retired women in Saudi Arabia will be judged
based on the responses of the candidates.

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Measured variable
The main variables that will be measured in this study include the psychological
consequences (either negative or positive) of the retired women in Saudi Arabia.
Indices
No applicable
Design Plan
Study type
Observational Study: Data will be collected from the study subjects that are not
randomly assigned to a treatment and this includes semi-structured interview.
Blinding
No blinding is done in this study.
Study design
Qualitative study, with the help of interview. The main research philosophy that will
be selected for the review include pragmatism research philosophy as it will help to study the
relationship between the retirement life and the mental health or psychology. The research
approach that will be suitable for this review include inductive research approach, which
helps in the generation of new theory based on the relationship, emerged from the psychology
or the mental state and their retirement life. Interview will be used as the main research
strategy.
Randomization
In this study, random probability sampling will be done. The randomization of
sampling will be done based on the selection of the first 50 candidates who reply to the email

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or provides consent. This will help to avoid the selection bias and will give equal opportunity
to all the participants to get selected for the survey.
Analysis plan
Statistical model
NA
Transformation
This semi-structured interview will be conducted based on the open-ended
questionnaire. The decoding of the data will done from the audio file. Professional
transcriptionist will be assigned to decode the recorded interview in the form of written
transcript. The transcripts will be read and re-read several times in order to highlight the
significant statements for the generation of themes. The written transcripts, after being
generated, will be verified by the interviewee. This falls under the ethical guidelines of the
informed. The verification of the transcript will help to avoid the controversy of fabricated
excerpts. Once verification is done, they will be encrypted in digital format (Microsoft word
file) and will be stored in computer. Each line will be assigned against a particular line
number depending on the chronology of the interview. The line number in the transcript will
aid in the process of data-analysis (Kallio et al., 2016).
Follow-up analysis
No follow up analysis will be done as it will be one time interview.
Inference Criteria
NA

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Data exclusion
Introductory question like what is your name, your work experience will be excluded
during the analysis of the transcript. Moreover, as per the ethical guidelines of the privacy
and confidentiality of the interview conduction, the name and other identification details of
the participants will be kept withheld. Each participant will be given pseudo names and the
original names of the participants will be kept strictly confidential (Kallio et al., 2016).
Missing data
According to Schlomer, Bauman and Card (2010), mean substitution is a poor method
for handling the missing data. On the other hand multiple imputation and full information
maximum likelihood are the two recommended alternatives in order to rule out the missing
data in interview. In this research, the researcher will follow the same path in order to cope
up with missing data.
Scripts
The interview scripts or transcripts will be generated from the recorded audio file by
professional transcriptionist who will be blinded about the scope of the interview (Kallio et
al., 2016).
Other
NA

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References
Acharya, A. S., Prakash, A., Saxena, P., & Nigam, A. (2013). Sampling: Why and how of
it. Indian Journal of Medical Specialties, 4(2), 330-333.
Al-Mahmoud, S., Mullen, P., & Spurgeon, P. (2012). Saudisation of the nursing workforce:
Reality and myths about planning nurse training in Saudi Arabia. Journal of American
Science, 8(4), 369-379.
Bloomfield, R., Nelson, M. W., & Soltes, E. (2016). Gathering data for archival, field,
survey, and experimental accounting research. Journal of Accounting
Research, 54(2), 341-395.
Choi, K. S., Stewart, R., & Dewey, M. (2013). Participation in productive activities and
depression among older Europeans: Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in
Europe (SHARE). International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 28(11), 1157-1165.
Cohen, J. (2013). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Routledge.
Kallio, H., Pietilä, A. M., Johnson, M., & Kangasniemi, M. (2016). Systematic
methodological review: developing a framework for a qualitative semi‐structured
interview guide. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(12), 2954-2965.
Lamadah, S. M., & Sayed, H. Y. (2014). Challenges facing nursing profession in Saudi
Arabia. Journal of Biology, Agriculture and Healthcare, 4(7), 20-25.
Levy, P. S., & Lemeshow, S. (2013). Sampling of populations: methods and applications.
John Wiley & Sons.

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Marshall, B., Cardon, P., Poddar, A., & Fontenot, R. (2013). Does sample size matter in
qualitative research?: A review of qualitative interviews in IS research. Journal of
Computer Information Systems, 54(1), 11-22.
Schlomer, G. L., Bauman, S., & Card, N. A. (2010). Best practices for missing data
management in counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling psychology, 57(1), 1.
Strain, J., Didehbani, N., Cullum, C. M., Mansinghani, S., Conover, H., Kraut, M. A., ... &
Womack, K. B. (2013). Depressive symptoms and white matter dysfunction in retired
NFL players with concussion history. Neurology, 81(1), 25-32.
Szolnoki, G., & Hoffmann, D. (2013). Online, face-to-face and telephone surveys—
Comparing different sampling methods in wine consumer research. Wine Economics
and Policy, 2(2), 57-66.
Welsh, D. H., Memili, E., Kaciak, E., & Al Sadoon, A. (2014). Saudi women entrepreneurs:
A growing economic segment. Journal of Business Research, 67(5), 758-762.