The Specific Methodologic Strategies to Used and Strengths and Limitations of Selected Approach

The Specific Methodologic Strategies to Used and Strengths and Limitations of Selected Approach It is also important to explore specific methodologic strategies that can be used in exploring the research question. As earlier indicated, the chosen design is a prospective cohort study design. Therefore, particular methodological strategies will be used. One of them is selecting the study population, which will be postmenopausal women who do not have breast cancer at baseline. They can be recruited from diverse settings such as communities, population registries, and healthcare databases. The exposure, in this case, is hormone replacement therapy. Therefore, information reading the same would be collected at baselines, and the information will also be updated during the follow-up. It can include the type of hormone replacement therapy, dosage, duration of use, and any changes made to the therapy over time (Azam et al.,2020). It will be important to prospectively follow the patient in a bid to track the breast cancer incident cases through strategies such as electronic health records and cancer registries. Medical record review can be used to confirm the breast cancer cases that occur during the follow-up duration. As part of exploring the association, various measures, such as relative risks or hazard ratios, will be obtained through a statistical analysis. Particular methods used in making the selections may have both strengths and limitations. Several settings will be considered when selecting the participants. As such, recruiting participants for cohort studies would allow representative sample selection, which boosts the generalizability of the findings. However, the limitation is that there can be attrition and loss of follow-up over time, and both have the potential to introduce bias as well as negatively impact the validity of the findings (Razigalla, 2020). In assessing the exposure, prospective studies offer a platform for collecting detailed exposure information at numerous time points, hence lowering the chances of recall bias. This approach also improves the accuracy of the exposure assessment. On the other hand, the self-reported data on hormone replacement therapy can be subject to misclassification or recall bias. Besides, changes in exposure status may not be recorded in real-time, hence causing exposure misclassification. The Ethical Consideration Pertaining to The Study Research ethics should always be considered when conducting research. Therefore, there are various ethical considerations pertaining to this study that will be explored. One of the central ones is informed consent. It is important that the postmenstrual women participating in the study give informed consent after they have been given important information on the aim of the study, expected procedures, and potential benefits and risks. It is also important to consider privacy and confidentiality. There is a need to ensure that the participant’s health and personal information remain confidential and private by safely storing the records, using password access, and limiting the disclosure of sensitive information to authorized individuals only (Tappen, 2022). There is also a need to ensure that the procedures used or employed during the study all contribute to the minimization of potential harm through strategies such as monitoring potential adverse events and promoting patient safety throughout the study period. Conclusion This study has focused on the association between hormone replacement therapy and the risk of developing breast cancer among postmenstrual women. The chosen study design to be used for exploring this association is a prospective cohort study design. Methodology and data collection strategies have all been discussed. References Azam, S., Jacobsen, K. K., Aro, A. R., Lynge, E., & Andersen, Z. J. (2020). Hormone replacement therapy and mammographic density: a systematic literature review. Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 182, 555-579. Doi: 10.1007/s10549-020-05744-w Curley, A. L. C. (Ed.). (2020). Population-based nursing: Concepts and competencies for advanced practice (3rd ed.). Springer Giaquinto, A. N., Sung, H., Miller, K. D., Kramer, J. L., Newman, L. A., Minihan, A., … & Siegel, R. L. (2022). Breast cancer statistics, 2022. CA: A Cancer Journal For Clinicians, 72(6), 524–541. https://doi.org/10.3322/caac.21754 Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. A. (2021). Epidemiology for public health practice (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett. Langer, R. D., Hodis, H. N., Lobo, R. A., & Allison, M. A. (2021). Hormone replacement therapy–where are we now? Climacteric, 24(1), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/13697137.2020.1851183 LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2021). Nursing research E-book: methods and critical appraisal for evidence-based practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.