Research Design Flashcards
A nurse researcher is studying the attitudes of high school students toward bullying at Metro High School during the past school year. What type of study is this?
A cross-sectional study
A nurse researcher implemented a physical fitness program for nurses in one hospital and used nurses in another hospital as the control group. Which threat would be the most serious to internal validity in this study?
selection
A nurse researcher plans a study to compare the occurrence of anxiety disorders in military personnel deployed overseas with those who were never deployed overseas. What research design would the researcher use?
non-experimental design
A nurse researcher tested whether sucrose (vs. sterile water. had a beneficial effect on infant pain during immunizations. Neither those administering the intervention nor the parents of the infants knew which infants received the sucrose. This strategy is an example of:
blinding
A researcher collected cross-sectional data to estimate the percentage of community-dwelling older people who were at risk of malnutrition. What type of study is this?
a prevalence study
A researcher initiated an innovative cigarette cessation intervention. Seventy participants received the intervention, and their cigarette smoking 3 months later was compared to smoking at baseline. What type of design is this?
a one group pretest-posttest design
An RCT could use all of the following designs, except a
nonequivalent control group design
A sample of both users and nonusers of electronic cigarettes was followed over a 10-year period to assess whether there were any long-term adverse effects. What type of design was this?
prospective
A team of researchers evaluated a protocol designed to reduce medication errors. Data on medication errors were obtained for each month in the 12 months preceding the intervention, and for each month in the 12 months following the intervention. What type of design is this?
a time-series design
Construct validity concerns inferences from the particular exemplars of a study to the higher order constructs that they are intended to represent. The absence of which strategy in an RCT could undermine construct validity?
blinding
Four types of validity affect the rigor of a quantitative study. Which type concerns the validity of inferences that there is an empirical relationship between variables?
statistical conclusion validity
If a researcher studied the relationship between women’s age and their frequency of performing breast self-examination, how would the study be classified?
descriptive correlational
In a retrospective case-control study of the relationship between having or not having a herniated disc and patients’ prior history of trauma in a sample of 200 men and women, the researcher would most likely use which method to control the gender distribution in the groups?
matching cases and control on gender
In a study examining the quality of life of patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery, the research team collected data 2 months after the surgery, and then 2 years later. What type of study is this?
follow-up
In their cross-sectional correlational study, researchers hypothesized that stress was a risk factor for depression among college students. The researchers found a correlation between stress and depression, consistent with the hypothesis. Which is a possible threat to the internal validity of this study?
Temporal ambiguity
Nurse researchers randomly assigned 50 participants to a 3-month smoking cessation intervention and 50 to be in the control group. At the end of the study, there were 40 in the intervention group and 32 in the control group. Which threat to internal validity would be especially salient in this study?
mortality
There are four types of validity that affect the rigor of a quantitative study. Which type of validity does a researcher address in choosing to use a true experimental design?
internal validity
There are several alternative strategies for controlling confounding participant characteristics. Which method is the most effective?
Using a homogeneous sample
randomizing participants to conditions
To test the effect of a Hatha yoga intervention on blood pressure, 100 prehypertensive adolescents were randomly assigned to either Hatha yoga classes or to an art class. This control group strategy is called:
an attention control group
Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, nurse researchers studied the effect of quiet music on sleep efficiency in low-birth-weight infants. Which threat to internal validity would be especially salient in this study?
Maturation
