Sample Assessments

Browse through the curated selection of our completed assessments to get a sense of the quality and depth of our work. Whether you need guidance, inspiration, or just want to evaluate our work, this page is your go-to resource.

Critical Research Appraisal Assignment

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is an attempt to understand the views, perceptions, feelings, opinions, and attitudes of people. It involves after a given topic, using interviews, analysis, or observations to determine the participants’ attitudes and their thought processes (Tenny & Brannan, 2022).

Some nursing phenomena suited for a qualitative research approach include:

Flexibility in Design: Second, qualitative research, by definition, has the potential for flexibility in the overall design, which allows for the identification of new topics, categories, and concepts towards later stages of data collection and analysis. This flexibility serves to give a more complete picture of what the collected data may reveal concerning the phenomenon under investigation best when researchers can modify their strategy depending on their findings.

Context and Subjectivity: Self, the participants and the researchers are not totally neutral in the entire study process but come along with attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of their own. Therefore, it implies that factors in which the research takes place, including cultural, social, and community factors, become an important component in coming up with the results. This emphasizes the awareness of the social contexts of nursing situations and the impact of the personalities of the actors involved in their cases (Tenny & Brannan, 2022).

Understanding Social Interactions: Categorically, qualitative approaches are more appropriate in addressing nursing concerns that pertain to social relations including, communication with the client, and coordination within the nursing fraternity.

Participant-Centered Approach: Opinion-research allows participants to express their individual perceptions and individual impressions which are linked to nursing care in contrast to quantitive research.

Qualitative research involves several methods, all designed to obtain different kinds of information or data. The first is the grounded theory in which data is approached in cycles to ascertain new theoretical perspectives from participant performances and perceptions. The second method, ethnographic, aims to comprehend the social and cultural culture from the participant’s point of view which will be of benefit to nursing practices regarding peculiar cultural beliefs. Finally, phenomenology is concerned with the basic understanding of the experiences of the participants as they relate to a phenomenon of interest (Pyo & Ock, 2023).

This paper aims to explore quantitative research in nursing practice and its strengths and limitations. A primary limitation is that it employs samples of a lesser size and is highly context-bound. Furthermore, it may contain a high degree of subjectivity and bias in analysis and it may not perform well as regards causal analysis. However there are significant advantages of qualitative research as well, virtues such as a capacity to generate detailed portrayals of features of nursing phenomena. It has the strengths of enabling close scrutiny of patients’ views, understandings, and feelings, and thus provides a detailed understanding of social processes at work in healthcare. It is critically valuable in the creation of new interventions and in improving the approach to patient-centered care.

Quantitative research design focuses on a wider range of nursing phenomena and investigates the depth of the human view. This approach ‘captures’ aspects such as experience, affective response, and context of nursing care through data gathering tools, including focus groups, observation, and interviews. Research of this sort is particularly useful in patient-integrated care projects as it also details dynamics within the healthcare team and variability in healthcare. Further, it can be used for evaluating the success of performed interventions in nursing as well as the patient’s quality of life (Pyo & Ock, 2023).

Qualitative Research Article Name:

“Exploring the Experiences of Family Caregivers for Nursing Home Residents with Dementia: A Grounded Theory Approach.”

Study Purpose: Therefore, this qualitative research study aims at identifying and comprehensively describing the usual experiences that are experiences of most family caregivers who are currently offering care to their loved ones with dementia in a home care setting. Therefore the study, depending on quantitative results, will strive to find more nuanced experiences of caregivers and their subjective experiences of the difficulties, feelings, and coping activities they face when performing dementia care in the home environment.

Design: Exploratory phenomenology will be applied in order to examine the life stories of these caregivers as well as the meaning that they attach to such experiences.

Ethical Issues: The two main issues of ethical importance in this research cover the consent to participate in the research by all the participants, whereby every participant should understand the purpose of the study the risks if any involved, and his or her rights to be protected during the research. It is also important to maintain the issue of confidentiality mainly through protecting any identity of participants and other sensitive information asked from them and only authorized people should have access to such information. Lastly, the identity of participants should be kept anonymous, this implies that we must not capture identifiable data or information regarding the participants which can be traced back to the participant when compiling any report or publication resulting from this research.

Sampling and Recruitment: The sampling technique used in this study was purposive because it aimed to recruit only those caregivers who work in home care settings and who can therefore provide firsthand accounts of the experiences. The reason for this sampling selection was to obtain ample detail of the individual accounts of these caregivers’ roles. Because phenomenological research aims at describing and interpreting the everyday experiences of people, the size of the sample appeared to be reasonable. It is for this reason that the chosen sample size would be deemed sufficient to provide a broad-spectrum range of phenomenological descriptions from participants, as it is a characteristic of phenomenological research to be interested in the provision of extensive and qualitative data (Piersol & Leland, 2024).

Data Collection: Participants were given a voice in the form of interviews so that they could freely express themselves concerning issues being experienced.

Data Analysis: The reason was that thematic analysis is the most suitable for the kind of study, which involves the search for patterns in the data.

Rigor: The quality of the research was assessed according to the key measures of the methodological quality of qualitative studies, namely dependability, confirmability, credibility, and transferability. In order to maintain the reliability of the study, member peer debriefing was used in this study. In this process students collaborated with peers for discussion on the findings with the intent of having external corroboration of the study, thereby enhancing the credibility of the outcomes (Piersol & Leland, 2024).

Findings: About the family caregivers of dementia patients: The potential themes that were found included: Coping strategies and Emotional burden in home care.

Limitations: This is applicable to generalization as it only includes the caregivers of critically ill patients and it is a small sample size thus its external validity is questionable (Piersol & Leland, 2024).

Implications for Nursing: This paper offers an insight into family caregivers and specifically focuses on what they undergo as they provide home care for the patients, to how patient-centered and risk-reduction interventional strategies could be designed. These include; Behavioural intervention for treating unhealthy behaviours and treatment of pain through pain rating scales for assessment of the patient.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is mainly focused on acquiring and analyzing numerical data to emphasize the magnitude or degree of change of certain particular variables. This way, the researchers want to know, describe, and understand whether two variables are related to one another in some way. Quantitative research aims to develop hypotheses and then test them to make inferences and conclusions from the results of statistical analysis (Barroga & Matanguihan, 2022).

Quantitative research is an organized strategy that relies on operational techniques to analyze data in order to explore, support, or reject hypotheses. It is meant to provide quantitative, accurate, and reproducible outcomes associated with identified nursing phenomena. This research methodology involves: This research methodology focuses on the accuracy of the results in question thus eliminating the chances of bias. Quantitative research aims at reducing the probability of developing bias while conducting the study, at both the data collection and analysis stages since it will employ more structured kinds of techniques and procedures. Its final aim is to offer outcomes that leave significance, relevance, and generalisability, that is, it seeks to contribute to evidence in practice nursing. Standardization of measuring instruments and processes is possible since preparing a measuring instrument in a certain manner makes it quite easy to reproduce and in the same way can facilitate comparison between different studies (Barroga & Matanguihan, 2022). In this design, numerical data is gathered through standardized tools or measurements, creating a pathway for statistical analysis. Through quantitative research, cause-and-effect relationships between variables in nursing phenomena can be established.

In observational research, study participants are observed in their natural environment without any interference from the researcher, allowing phenomena to unfold naturally and be recorded. In contrast, interventional research involves the researcher actively manipulating one or more variables to examine their effect on the study subjects’ outcomes. Experimental designs are research approaches that involve the random assignment of participants to one of two groups: an experimental group or a control group. This randomization process is crucial because it helps ensure that any differences observed between the groups can be attributed to the intervention or treatment being tested, thus allowing researchers to draw stronger conclusions about cause and effect.

In contrast, quasi-experimental designs do not use random assignment of participants. Instead, participants are assigned to groups based on pre-existing characteristics or conditions. Because of the absence of randomization, it becomes more difficult to establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the intervention and the outcomes observed. The lack of random assignment introduces potential biases, making it harder to control for confounding variables that could influence the results. Therefore, while quasi-experimental designs can provide valuable insights, they are less reliable in drawing definitive causal conclusions compared to experimental designs.

Inferential statistics play a crucial role in quantitative research by enabling researchers to make predictions, inferences, or generalizations about a larger population based on the analysis of a smaller sample. These statistical methods allow researchers to draw conclusions that extend beyond the immediate data set, making it possible to estimate population parameters, test hypotheses, and assess relationships between variables. On the other hand, descriptive statistics are used to summarize, organize, and present the key characteristics of a dataset in a clear and meaningful way, without attempting to make broader generalizations or predictions. Descriptive statistics provide insight into the data’s central tendency, variability, and distribution but do not allow researchers to make conclusions about a larger population. Furthermore, the appropriate use of both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques depends heavily on the level of measurement of the variables being analyzed. The level of measurement—whether nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio—determines which specific statistical methods are suitable for summarizing the data and testing hypotheses, ensuring the analysis is both accurate and meaningful.

CRITICAL RESEARCH APPRAISAL ASSIGNMENT

Ratio: Numeric data with a true zero point. Analysis typically uses correlation coefficients, standard deviation, and mean.

Interval: Numeric data with equal intervals but no true zero. T-tests, standard deviation, and mean are commonly used for analysis.

Nominal: Categorical data without a meaningful order. The analysis involves frequencies and percentages.

Ordinal: Categorical data with a meaningful order. Rank-based tests, mode, and median are applied in the analysis.

Quantitative research design is used in research to identify trends and patterns, test causal relationships, make predictions, and generalize findings to a larger population. It provides a method for studying a specific group of people, referred to as the sample population.

Quantitative Reports Research Study

Name of the Article:

“The clinical effects of a new management mode for hypertensive patients: a randomized

controlled trial.”

Study Purpose and Design: Specifically, this study aims to examine the feasibility of using a newly developed drug to lower blood pressure levels in persons with hypertension. Thus, a method of randomized controlled trial will be applied to ensure the precise determination of the cause-effect relationship (Sun & Ma, 2020).

Blinding and Randomization: Blinding means a situation whereby either the participant or the examiner has no information about the type of treatment the participant is given. Concerning blinding in this research, both participants and the researchers will not be aware of the treatment allocation to avoid influence by the knowledge. Randomization also entails the allocation of the participants to various treatment groups to cut down on biases. In this study, the best ways of randomization and blinding will be employed to reduce errors that may result from biases (Sun & Ma, 2020).

Ethical Considerations: The participants’ informed consent will be sought in the course of the study to safeguard their well-being during the study. Your privacy and our confidentiality will be assured.

Sampling: In this paper, purposive sampling will be used to identify the participants with hypertension. In this study, power analysis will be used to estimate the sample size to guarantee that it will contain a sufficient sample for effect size.

Data Collection: Blood pressure data was obtained with a standardized sphygmomanometer. To be more accurate, for the current research, it is imperative to confirm the reliability and validity of the measurement instrument.

Data Analysis: Various inferential tests such as independent t-tests for comparing two groups or matched pairwise t-tests, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for comparing differences in blood pressure for various treatment groups. The measurement of blood pressure is at the interval level which provides an appropriate statistical analysis (Sun & Ma, 2020).

Findings and Limitations: At the end of the research, it is concluded that the new drug helps to lower hypertension patients’ blood pressure by a considerable margin. However, they have limitations such as the possible confounding factors and length of follow-up time which is stated in Sun and Ma (2020).

Credibility of Study: The adoption of a randomized controlled study adds potency to the internal validity of the study and possible causal persuasion. Besides, randomization and blinding contribute to the reduction of mistakes in the study. However, the present results must be generalized with caution because of the nature of the sample and the settings selected. Thereustom. Statistical significance also refers to the probability that the results were produced by a certain cause and can be analyzed by p-values as well as confidence intervals.

Thus, the present findings have offered useful findings that may inform and enhance nursing practice in the prevention of Hypertension. The potential to develop the quality of patient care can be seen in the focus on the new medication and talking about its benefits in terms of reducing blood pressure levels.

References

Barroga,   E.,   &   Matanguihan,   G.   J.   (2022).  A  Practical   Guide   to   Writing   Quantitative   and Qualitative Research Questions and Hypotheses in Scholarly Articles. Journal of Koreanmedical science, 37(16), e121. https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2022.37.e121

Piersol, C. V., & Leland, N. E. (2024). Understanding the Experiences of Family Caregivers of

Nursing   Home   Residents   With   Dementia:   A   Grounded   Theory   Study. The

Gerontologist, 64(4), gnad102. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnad102

Pyo,   J.,   &   Ock,   M.   (2023).   Qualitative   Research   in   Healthcare:   Necessity   and

Characteristics. Journal of preventive medicine and public health = Yebang Uihakhoe

chi, 56(1), 12–20. https://doi.org/10.3961/jpmph.22.451

Sun, Y. Q., & Ma, G. J. (2020). The clinical effects of a new management mode for hypertensive

patients:   a   randomized   controlled   trial. Cardiovascular   diagnosis   and   therapy, 10(6),1805–1815. https://doi.org/10.21037/cdt-20-589

Tenny, S., &  Brannan, J. M. (2022). Qualitative  Study. StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island

(FL). Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470395/

 

Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program, Philosophical & Theoretical Evidence-Based Research, NUR501

Bonuses and discounts give up to

20% OFF!