WEEK 4 – Developing New Evidence Assignment
WEEK 4 – Developing New Evidence Assignment
Overview of the Qualitative Research Approach
Qualitative research studies phenomena in their natural settings. By using the natural settings, this design interprets phenomena in terms of the meanings that people bring to them. Qualitative research aims to get a better understanding through firsthand experience because subjects share thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Qualitative research involves the collection of a variety of empirical materials. These materials include, but are not limited to, case study, personal experience, life story, interviews, observations, historical perspectives, interactional, and visual texts. All of this information becomes data that describe routine as well as problematic moments with the meanings these moments have in individuals’ lives.
Often, the qualitative approach is used as the initial research study in an area of interest because it will help to explore and define the phenomena. By gaining an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations, it provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential future quantitative research studies. Qualitative research study is also used to uncover trends in thought and opinions, and to dive deeper into the problem.
(Have you ever filled out a survey that asks you to give a range from one to five on service (quantitative) and then offers the opportunity to leave a comment (qualitative)? You have just participated in sharing the meaning of the event; or another way to think about this is that you have answered the question, why you selected the number you did.)
Using the same criteria, let’s explore qualitative research study, considering intervention, random assignment, and control.
Intervention: Qualitative research studies do not introduce treatments or manipulate variables. Instead, the researcher wants to understand the phenomenon from the viewpoint of the person who is experiencing it. Often using in-depth interviews, the researcher actually becomes the instrument of data collection by recording the conversation. Although a series of questions may have been identified as items to ask a subject, the researcher is intensely involved and will modify or even add new questions as the interview progresses. This is significantly different from quantitative research where all of the intervention and research conditions are kept the same. WEEK 4 – Developing New Evidence Assignment
Random assignment to groups: With qualitative research studies, there is no random assignment to groups. The researcher asks individuals who demonstrate the eligibility requirements to be subjects. Although this provides no control over extraneous variables, it allows for richer and more in-depth data because a diverse sample can be obtained.
Control: Because the qualitative researcher explores a phenomenon in natural or real -world settings, the amount of control is significantly less when compared to quantitative research. In fact, most qualitative researchers purposely avoid control so that the subject is comfortable and willing to share in-depth information. For example, a researcher using ethnographic design tradition in order to study a culture actually tries to become a part of the culture itself to gain the trust of the individuals and to obtain detailed observations. A researcher studying homelessness may become part of the homeless culture in order to gain a deeper understanding.
WEEK 5 –
To start this lesson, commonly used data collection methods for quantitative research are discussed. Important to any discussion of data collection is reliability and validity, which are needed to produce data that have quality or accuracy. A brief description of quantitative data analysis follows. The focus then switches to qualitative data. First the discussion is on data- collection methods, then on enhancing the quality of the data, and finally on data analysis. For both research approaches, all of these steps are needed prior to interpretation of the findings, which are presented in Week 6. Remember to consult your textbook for areas not discussed in the lecture or podcast but may be part of an assignment.
WEEK 6 – As noted previously, the interpretation of results is considered to be very important to the overall quality of the project or study. One reason for this is that the interpretation may or may not be generalized or transferred from the sample to a target population. No matter the research approach, it is the responsibility of the reader to carefully evaluate the evidence. In Week 7, the focus is on evidence-based practice and using the evidence produced from research.
It is important to understand that numbers are just numbers and words are just words—all data obtained from EBP projects and research data collection must be interpreted. In other words, a project coordinator or researcher must add meaning to data. When interpreting data, a project coordinator or researcher needs to have two viewpoints: Consider what the data say and consider what the data do not say.
With quantitative data, the interpretation would include the descriptive statistics about the sample, hypothesized data, and unhypothesized data. With qualitative research, data are reduced to common themes and/or patterns and then relationships between the common themes and/or patterns are reported.
Key to both approaches is quality—quality of the approach, sampling, methodology, and analysis. Guidelines useful in analyzing quantitative and qualitative approaches are presented in this lesson. The presented guidelines are your starting point; as you become more knowledgeable regarding the evaluation and use of research, you may want to add more criteria. WEEK 4 – Developing New Evidence Assignment
WEEK 7 – Exploring Research Results
This discussion gives you the opportunity to apply the PET model to a research article that supports your EBP project. .
· Provide a summary of the potential contributions of this EBP proposal project to your specialty track practice and identified practice setting (PART B)