Quanti - Data Collection Flashcards
What is data collection?
The process of acquiring subjects and collecting the data for a study.
Process must be clearly reported.
Usually under “Methods” section.
3 things to appraise in data collection
Recruitment of study participants
Consistency in data collection
Control in the study design
What to note for the recruitment of study participants?
- Period: in the beginning vs throughout
- The design of the study determines the method of selecting the participants.
- How many participants? Sample size
What is consistency in data collection and how do we ensure consistency?
Consistency is the key to maintain accuracy of data collection
Data collectors: training process, qualification, inter-rater reliability
Purpose of control in the study design
- To minimise the influence of intervening forces on the findings.
- Extraneous variables
e.g. acupressure -> sleep quality
e.g. noise, temperature, lighting
What are the types of data
Primary
Secondary
What is primary data
Data collected for a particular study
What is secondary data?
Data collected from previous research and stored in a database
3 methods to collect data
Self-reports
Observations
Biophysiologic
Self-reports data collection methods
Interviews
Questionnaire
Scale
Types of interviews used for data collection
Can be unstructured or semi-structured
What is a semi-structured interview?
e.g. A explored how nurses and doctors make the transition from active intervention to palliative and end-of-life care. They collected their data via semistructured interviews with 13 nurses and 13 medical staff.
Interviews began with the question,”could you tell me about what happened around the time of (patient’s name)
death?”
What are questionnaires?
Respondents complete the instrument themselves
Usually with closed-ended or open-ended questions
What are scales? Examples of commonly used scales?
a device that assigns a numeric score to people along a continuum
e.g. Likert scale, Visual analog scale, Rating scale
What is a Likert scale
of several declarative statements (items) that express a viewpoint on a topic.
e.g:
People with cancer almost always die. (Strongly disagree/disagree/uncertain/agree/strongly agree)
Chemotherapy is very effective in treating cancer (Strongly/disagree/disagree/ uncertain/agree/strongly agree)
What is a visual analog scale?
Used to measure strength, magnitude, or intensity of subjective feelings, sensations, or attitudes
e.g.:
Participants are asked to mark on the line. (“No pain” on one extreme end and “Pain as bad as it can possibly be” on the opposite end)
Researchers measure with a ruler the distance from the left end of the line to the participant’s mark
What is a rating scale?
A number is assigned to each category and the respondent choose the number
e.g. Wong Baker pain scale
What are the different types of response set biases?
- Social desirability bias
- Extreme response set bias
- Acquiescence response set bias
What is social desirability bias?
A tendency to misrepresent attitudes or traits by giving that are consistent with prevailing social views
e.g. “Do you think it’s okay to drink alcohol frequently?”
Yes or No
” How many hours per day do you spend on your phone?
<1 hr, 1-2 hrs, >3 hrs
What is extreme response set bias?
A tendency to consistently express extreme attitudes or feelings (e.g.strongly agree or strongly disagree, no middle ground)
Leads to distortions because extreme responses may be unrelated to the trait being measured
What is acquiescence response set bias?
Tendency to agree with all questions within the survey regardless of the content
e.g. “Are you outgoing and social?”
“Which do you prefer: a quiet night in or a raging party?”
How do we collect data via observations?
Unstructured observations:
- Happens spontaneously and recorded in words
Structured observations:
- Category systems/Checklists
- Rating scales
e.g. NEECHAM Confusion Scale an observational instrument for recording the
presence and severity of acute confusion
What are biophysical measures?
Blood pressure, temperature, hormone levels, bacterial counts, tissue biopsies,
blood level
Why do we collect data via biophysical measures?
Nursing interventions affect physiologic outcomes, aids in product assessment.
Why use it?
- Accurate, precise compared to self-report measures
- Objective
- Patients cannot easily distort measurements of biophysiologic functioning
- Instruments provide valid measures of targeted variables.
