Final Exam Flashcards
What are the 6 key elements of an EBP model?
Assess, ask, acquire, appraise, apply, and evaluate.
What is involved in the “assess” portion of the EBP model?
Assess situation. Identify issue, concern, or question in clinical practice.
What is involved in the “ask” portion of the EBP model?
Ask a question. Using a question format (PICO or PICo) to ask question relevant to clinical situation.
What is involved in the “acquire” portion of the EBP model?
Find research applicable to the situation/question. Find credible and current information to find evidence from scientific research studies.
What is involved in the “appraise” portion of the EBP model?
Validate research findings. Analyze, critique, and evaluate the research study for validity (truthfulness) and applicability.
What is involved in the “apply” portion of the EBP model?
Application of EBI. Integrating clinical, patient perspectives, and scientific knowledge (EBI) into a plan of action in the provision of care.
What is involved in the “evaluate” portion of the EBP model?
The last step in the process. Evaluate or measure patient outcomes as a result of your action is important in adding knowledge to the profession, providing support for policy changes, and incorporating EBI into clinical practice (EBP)
PICO is used to develop questions for what type of research?
Quantitative
PICo is used to develop questions for what type of research?
Qualitative
What are examples of research-based evidence?
Reports of multiple research studies, individual randomized clinical trials and non experimental research
What are examples of nonresearch-based evidence?
Clinical reports, nurse’s experiences, textbooks, opinions/beliefs/untested ideas
What is an abstract?
Summary or condensed version of a research report. Provide skeleton of key points of research report.
What is a systematic review?
Addresses a specific clinical question by summarizing multiple research studies, along with other evidence.
What is one of the strongest forms of evidence for EBP?
Systematic review
What is identified in the ‘problem/introduction’ portion of a research study?
Describes the gap in knowledge that will be addressed in the research study
What is identified in the ‘methods’ section of research reports?
Describes the process of implementing the research study
What is identified in the ‘results’ section of a research report?
Summarizes the specific information gathered in the research study
What is identified in the ‘conclusion’ section of a research report?
Describes the decisions or determinations that can be made about the research problem
What is the goal of the research process?
Generate knowledge that can be used in practice
What are ‘limitations’ in a research study?
Aspects of how the study was conducted that create uncertainty concerning the conclusion that can be derived from the study as well as the decisions that can be based on it
What are themes?
Abstractions that reflect phrases, words, or ideas that appear repeatedly when a researcher analyzes what people have said about a particular experience, feeling, or situation.
What is the mean?
Average for a set of numbers.
What are descriptive results?
Summary of information without comparing it to other information.
What is an example of descriptive results?
How many people were in the study, average age of those studied, percentage who responded in a particular manner
What does significance indicate?
Indicates a low likelihood that any differences or relationships found in a study happened by chance.
Significance is indicated by…
P values
What is a p value?
Indicates what percentage of the time the results reported would have happened by chance alone
What does a multivariate indicate?
The study reports findings for three (multi) or more factors (variate) and includes the relationships among these different factors
What is logistic regression?
Statistical procedure that allows to look at relationships between more than two factors and test whether those relationships are likely to occur by chance.
What do qualitative methods focus on?
Understanding the complexity of humans within the context of their lives. Seeks to build a picture of a phenomenon of interest.
What do quantitative methods focus on?
Focus on understanding and breaking down the phenomenon into parts to see how they do or do not connect. Involve collecting information that is specific and limited to the particular parts of events or phenomena being studied
What do mixed methods focus on?
Focuses on elements of both qualitative and quantitative methods by describing individuals’ personal experiences, feelings, or perceptions and the measurable portions of the variables.
What is a sample?
A smaller group, or subset of a group, of interest that is studied in a research study.
What is a meta synthesis?
Report of a study of a group single studies using qualitative methods..
What are measures?
Specific methods used to assign a number or numbers to an aspect or factor being studied (abstract concepts are assigned numbers so that the concepts can be analyzed using statistical procedures)
What is a literature review?
Focused summary of what has already been published regarding the question or problem.
What is a theory?
A written description of how several factors may relate to and affect each other
What is a hypothesis?
A prediction regarding the relationships or effects of selected factors on other factors.
What is a meta-analysis?
A quantitative approach to knowledge development that applies statistics to numeric results from different studies that addressed the same research problem to look for combined results that would not have happened by chance alone
What is quality improvement?
A process of evaluation of healthcare services to see if they meet specified standards or outcomes of care and to identify how they can be improved.
Quality improvement studies look at what?
Factos that may affect the outcome or actions of interest.
What is process improvement?
A management system that in which all participants involved strive to improve customer satisfaction.
How many steps are there to take in the research process?
Five
What is done in the first step of the research process?
Define and describe a knowledge gap or problem
What is done in the second step of the research process?
Developing a detailed plan to gather information to address the problem/gap in knowledge
What is done in the third step of the research process?
Implement study
What is done in the fourth step of the research process?
Analyze and interpret the results of the study
What is done in the fifth step of the research process?
Disseminate findings from study
What is included in the ‘discussion’ portion of a research report?
Summarizes, compares and speculates about the results of the study
What information is given in the ‘summary’ portion within the discussion in a research report?
Summary of key results. Addresses results that directly relate to the major research question.
When comparing results from findings to another, what section of the research report would we expect to find this? What is the key purpose of doing this?
In the discussion section. Key purpose is to offer explanation of the results by comparing to results of others similar studies.
What is confirmation?
Verification of results from other studies.
What is the main purpose of a replication study?
To duplicate an earlier study to see if results match and can confirm those results of another study.
Does the discussion portion of a research report give the reader a FULL picture of ALL of the results in the study?
No, only a select few that relate directly to the question posed.
What is speculation?
Reflecting on results and offering explanation for them.
What is conceptualization?
Creating a picture of an abstract idea; it is a picture of some aspect of health.
Qualitative studies do what in relation to the phenomenon of interest?
Conceptualize
Quantitative studies do what in relation to the phenomenon?
Objectify and isolate parts of the phenomenon.
What is the goal of research?
Generalization
What is generalization?
Ability to apply a particular study’s findings to the broader population represented by the sample
Why is it important for limitations to be included in the discussion of research reports?
So that the reader can appraise the findings before applying them to practice
What is the study design?
The overall plan or organization of a study.
What are 3 common errors in research reports?
Failure to include one or more major aspects of a discussion and conclusion, presenting a confusing summary of key findings/presenting new results, over interpreting the results
What is an inference?
Reasoning that goes into the process of drawing a conclusion based on evidence.
What are inferential statistics?
Statistical procedures used in most quantitative studies. Coming up with conclusions based on evidence using statistics.
Qualitative studies increase _______ of a phenomenon
Understanding
Quantitative studies ______ and _____ a phenomenon allowing us to infer what would happen to other similar groups
Describe and explain
Results that allow us to predict include information about the _____ and ______ of events or factors
Order, timing.
Only results that allow us to ______ provide information that is useful to predict future responses or situations if the same set of circumstances applies.
Infer
Research results that only _____ or _____ cannot be used to predict future outcomes or directly identify the cause of the findings
Describe, explain.
What is a variable?
An aspect of the phenomenon of interest/research problem that is difference among people or situations.
What is univariate analysis?
Analysis of data at a given point that focuses on only one variable.
What is bivariate analysis?
Analysis with only two variables.
T/F both qualitative and quantitative studies have variables?
T
What is content analysis?
Process of understanding, interpreting, and conceptualizing the meanings in qualitative data.
How would a researcher perform content analysis?
Break down the data into units that are meaningful and then develop a categorization scheme
What is a categorization scheme?
An orderly combination of categories carefully defined so that no overlap occurs.
What does coding/data reduction mean?
Breaking down and labelling large amounts of data to identify the category to which they belong
What is a theme?
An idea or concept that is recurrent throughout the data
What is data saturation in qualitative research?
Point at which all new information collected is the same as the information that has already been collected.
What are the two variables in quantitative research called?
Independent, dependent.
What is the dependent variable?
Depends on other variables in the study. It is the outcome variable of interest.
What is an independent variable?
Used to explain/predict the dependent variable/outcome of interest. Called the predictor variable.
Provide examples of independent variables?
Age, perceived well-being, race, marital status.
What is variance?
Diversity in data for a single variable.
What does variance reflect?
How the values for a variable are dispersed.
Variance (is a number) can tell us how much _____ or ______ exists in a group of numbers
Difference, variety
What is standard deviation?
Square root of the variance.
Provide an example of why variance and standard deviation are important to understand when interpreting results from a study?
If both studies for pain control had a reporting average rate for pain of 2, but one study had an SD of .7 and the other had an SD of 2.2, we can tell the latter study had more variance in results meaning some people experienced more/less pain than the average rated 2/10. This is important for healthcare as we are looking for consistency among pain relief for patients.
What is distribution?
Refers to how the findings are dispersed.
What is frequency distribution?
How frequently each category occurs or is selected.
Normal curve is a _____ distribution. Meaning?
Theoretical. If we could measure a variable for every individual, the result would be a perfectly symmetrical bell-shape.
In quantitative studies, a measure of central tendency shows what?
Common or typical numbers.
What three things give us central tendency?
Mean, median, mode
What is the median?
Value that falls in the middle of the distribution when numbers are in numeric order.
What is the mode?
Most frequently occurring number.
When distribution ‘leans’ this is what?
A skew
Measures of central tendency and distribution are ________ statistics that ______ information about a ________
Univariate, summarize, variable
What is demographic data?
Descriptive information about characteristics of subjects.
What are two common errors in the reports of descriptive results?
Incomplete information and confusing information.
Descriptive statistical results allow us to know and explain what?
Variables that we are interested in understanding.
Inferential statistics takes descriptive statistics a step further by…
Predicting or inferring how variables may occur in the future.
What is tested for in inferential statistics?
Relationships, associations, and differences among variables that are statistically significant.
What do confidence intervals state?
The range of actual values for the statistic we are computing in which 95/100 values would fall.
Interpretation of confidence interval tells us what?
The smaller the range, without zero in it, the more confident we can be that the test statistic reflects the ‘real’ world
Interpretation of p value tell us what?
The smaller the value, the less likely that the test result occurred by chance alone
What does statistical significance mean?
That there is less than 5% chance that the amount of relationship or difference found happened by chance
What are nonparametric statistics used for?
Numbers that don’t have a bell-shaped distribution curve and are categoric or ordinal.
What do categoric or ordinal numbers represent?
Variables for which there is no established equal distance between each category (like numbers used to represent gender or rating of preference for car colour)
What 2 criteria must be met in order to apply parametric statistics to numbers?
- numbers must be normally distributed (like frequency distribution, bell-shaped curve) 2. numbers must be interval or ratio numbers (like age or intelligence score), the numbers must have an order, and there must be equal distance between the numbers