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PRESENTATION AND ORAL DEFENSE

Research/Inquiry Process Questions

  1. The presence of reliable questionnaires that were able to measure the level of depression, anxiety, and ADHD for me was a very influential factor towards me conducting a questionnaire study due to the fact that other methods may have been too time consuming or costly and could potentially give me relatively skewed data if I tried to measure each individual's level of psychological comorbidities myself. The Beck Depression Inventory form was heavily used by many other inquiries that included measuring the level of depression in individuals as part of their experiment, the PROMIS Emotional Health--Anxiety forms were made by the PROMIS Health Organization which heavily deals with psychology, and the Wender Utah Rating Scale for the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder form was made by Optima Health, an organization that associates itself with psychology and health insurance. Given the reliability of such questionnaires, it made it easier to conduct the study and made my results much more trustworthy. 

  2. This heavily questionnaire-based method aligns with the purpose my research because part of my research asks for a relationship between the type of narcolepsy and the level of depression, anxiety, and ADHD in an individual. Acquiring information on the type of narcolepsy each has was done through an inquiry form that asked for demographic and psychological characteristics; the levels of the psychological comorbidities were done through three reliable questionnaires that I had found. The Beck Depression Inventory form was heavily used by many other inquiries that included measuring the level of depression in individuals as part of their experiment, the PROMIS Emotional Health--Anxiety forms were made by the PROMIS Health Organization which heavily deals with psychology and therefore was developed to measure the severity of anxiety in an individual, and the Wender Utah Rating Scale for the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder form was made by Optima Health, an organization that associates itself with psychology and health insurance and made this questionnaire to analyze the severity of ADHD in an individual. The convenience and reliability of using such questionnaires for my methodology and my data therefore led me to use a questionnaire-based method. I was also considering using a more scientific method to gather data on the levels of psychological comorbidities, such as examining the levels of certain hormones in the brain, but such a method requires advanced technology that I did not have access to as well as flying a multitude of volunteers to where I was, which was too time-consuming and costly.

  3. Given that I was trying to find something related to narcolepsy and each of the psychological comorbidities to develop my research, I went to Google Scholar and PubMed and typed in keywords such as narcolepsy and paired that with either depression, anxiety, or ADHD. I used this strategy because it made flipping through the variation of sources much easier than  also made sure the sources I used were at most published ten years before so as to ensure that the information I presented was not refuted or out of date. I rejected using any sources that were just presented through a mere Google search given such data could be unreliable. 

  4. I made sure the sources that I used were at most ten years ago so that the information I present was not refuted or out of date and made sure they were relevant to my study by reading the purpose of their study and, if seemingly relevant enough, delving into the details of the experiment to see if my research study bounced off it. I also looked into all the journals that all sources were from to make sure they were reliable and relevant in terms of my study. I discarded sources that were obtained from a mere Google search that were not part of any journals given the fact that there is not confirmation that such sources are reliable in information. 

  5. One challenge in implementing my research method was in finding people with narcolepsy who would support my experiment and participate in it given many of the forums I asked were inactive. I addressed this by including a wide variety of narcolepsy support groups as well as certain sleep organizations to ensure that more than a few support groups would respond.

  6. The most important source of information I found in my research was probably the Beck Depression Inventory given that it was used by a variety of previous experiments that were measuring the level of depression in individuals, therefore ensuring its reliability. This is important for my research process because using a questionnaire to measure the level of depression in individuals is crucial to gathering the data for my experiment; therefore, relying on a trustworthy questionnaire that accurately represents the data was very helpful. 

Depth of Understanding Questions

  1. The fundamental argument in my research was that there are relationships between the type of narcolepsy an individual is diagnosed with and the influence it has on the severity of certain psychological comorbidities (focusing on depression, anxiety, and ADHD). This argument relates to the primary purpose of my research in that the purpose of my experiment is to find any relationships between the two factors, so my argument provides a hypothesis towards this purpose. 

  2. The ethical perspective was the most difficult to incorporate in my opinion given that it is not automatically answered by the research inquiry; therefore, some other actions had to have been taken to ensure that it was being sufficiently included (including that of a consent form that provided a detailed synopsis of what the participant was to do in an ethical perspective).

  3. I differentiated among the perspectives by relatively separating them out in my research paper. For example, my ethical perspective was mainly shown through the consent form that I had made for my inquiry and the questionnaires represented the psychological perspective of my research.

  4. My conclusions relate to the current research in the psychological field (specifically that of narcolepsy) given the fact that it provides more detail towards the relationships between narcolepsy and psychological comorbidities in terms of its type. Many of the works I examined only determined correlations between narcolepsy in general with that of psychological comorbdidities; therefore, my research conclusions were able to determine whether or not there were differences between the narcolepsy types and their influences on certain psychological comorbidities so as to either refute or support the solutions proposed for those with comorbidities. 

  5. The real-world implications on my findings are that certain therapies or treatments could be altered to fit individuals more efficiently by focusing on the certain comorbidities that are more susceptible for each type of narcolepsy and therefore alleviating such burdens from those affected before it becomes a huge obstacle in their way of life given the differences between the types of narcolepsy for certain psychological comorbidities. Furthermore, my research could stimulate looking at different types of narcolepsy and the ways they influence other comorbidities besides that of depression, anxiety, and ADHD. 

  6. Additional questions that emerged through my research were whether there was any relationship between the psychological comorbidities themselves (for example, are people with depression more susceptible to being diagnosed with anxiety?), as well as whether there are differences between the two types of narcolepsy in the susceptibility of being diagnosed with other disorders. I would recommend to other researchers to ensure that they have easy access to people with narcolepsy in order to conduct this experiment. Not only is narcolepsy relatively rare, but it is also misdiagnosed plenty of times, making the potential sample size even more difficult to obtain. 

Reflection Throughout the Inquiry Process Questions

  1. My most influential source was the Beck Depression Inventory form, which measures the level of depression in an individual. This form was used in a multitude of previous research conducted in which they had to measure the level of depression in an individual, therefore validating its credibility, and in turn influenced my data by providing more accurate measurements of the severity of depression in each individual. This was apparent in my conclusions when reporting the measurements. 

  2. My expert advisor was most helpful in helping to design a research purpose that was not time-consuming or difficult to conduct by suggesting me to several articles that could potentially help in providing me a basis for my question as well as informing me about certain details of narcolepsy (including that of the different types of narcolepsy).

  3. I would ensure that I have easy access to a large population of people with narcolepsy so as to get a larger sample size and therefore more accurate and statistically significant results than what I got this time around. I would not choose a different area of inquiry, however, because this field is one that greatly interests me. I would, for my research project, contact more sleep specialists and ask a wider variation of narcolepsy support forums to spread my research to others. 

  4. I would contact more sleep specialists and a wider variety of sleep organizations to help spread awareness of my project given that I did not have a large enough sample size to accurately predict differences between narcolepsy type and psychological comorbdities.

  5. I was always interested in psychiatry and psychology, so this could lead to me examining relationships between psychological comorbidities themselves (such as if being diagnosed with depression leads to a higher susceptibility of being diagnosed with anxiety later). 

  6. I, at first, was trying to analyze relationships between the characteristics of narcolepsy with the severity of certain comorbidities; however, I was not able to find any questionnaires that measured such characteristics, and it turned out that the characteristics of narcolepsy were more divided than I had previously suspected. Therefore, I decided to change my research question to look at the types of narcolepsy and how they influence certain psychological comorbidities because it was easier to conduct in terms of the methodology (in which I merely asked those with narcolepsy what type of narcolepsy they were diagnosed with in the inquiry form). 

Presentation and Oral Defense Visual Aid

AP Research 2019

The Relationships Between Narcolepsy and Comorbidities

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