Research Qs and Designs within MMR Flashcards
What are the 3 mixed methods designs?
- Sequential explanatory
- Sequential exploratory
- Convergent, simultaneously or concurrent triangulation
What is a Sequential explanatory design?
- quantitative methods are followed by a qualitative method
- E.g. Interviewing individuals before knee surgery to understand their expectations in regards to the surgery and subsequently using the concerns highlighted by them to develop a survey or questionnaire
What is a Sequential exploratory design?
- qualitative methods are followed by quantitative methods
- E.g. understanding how patients attributed their changes in physical functioning & quality of life to s structured pulmonary program
What is a Convergent, simultaneously or concurrent triangulation design?
- Using both qualitative and quantitative methods simultaneously to capture greater complexity in one study while focusing on different aspects
- E.g. measuring time spent on a home program delivered by DVD or written format, and participants experience of doing each
Sequential explanatory design SIMPLE
Interpretation of QUAN results using QUAL results
Sequential exploratory design SIMPLE
Transfer or generalisation of QUAL results using QUAN results
Convergent, simultaneously or concurrent triangulation design SIMPLE
Comparison of QUAN and QUAL results
Difference between Mixed Methods and Multiple Methods
Mixed = collecting and reporting QUAN and QUAL data combined Multiple = collecting and reporting QUAN and QUAL data separately
What is a research question?
A Q that provides an explicit statement of what the researcher wants to know about
Importance of the research question
- Guide our literature review
- Assist in the selection of the most appropriate research design
- Indicate what type of data should be collected
- Identify type of participant
When developing your research questions, you may want to consider the following steps:
- Identify a broader subject
- Do a preliminary literature review
- Start to narrow down what your interest is
- Consider whether your application is feasible
- Write it down
When writing down the research question, you need to:
Clearly state the problem, highlight the population and the phenomena/variable of interest
What do you need to consider when designing a research study?
- What is the research question?
- What is the best research design to use?
- Who will be the participants for the study?
- How will data be collected?
- What methods/procedures will be used and have ethical considerations been addressed?
Types of qualitative research designs:
- In-depth interviews
- Focus groups
- Narrative research
- Ethnography
- Grounded theory
- Phenomenology
Stages of a research process
- Identify problem
- Develop a research question
- Review literature
- Select research method
- Select research participants
- Address ethical issue
- Collect data
- Analyse and interpret data
- Write up research findings
- Incorporate findings into evidence-based practice
Advantages of cross-sectional studies
- Inexpensive
- Little time to conduct
- Can estimate the prevalence of outcome of interest because sample is usually taken from the whole population
- Many outcomes and risk factors can be assessed at the same time
- No loss to follow-up
Advantages of RCTs
- Random allocation of participants helps to ensure that the groups are similar in all respects except exposure to the intervention
- Longitudinal nature of the study, whereby exposure to the intervention precedes the development of the outcome
Advantages of cohort studies
- Temporal dimension, whereby exposure is seen to occur before outcome, gives some indication of causality
- Can be used to study more than one outcome
- Can measure the change in exposure and outcome over time
Advantages of case-control studies
- Allows the assessment of causation when the outcome is rare or takes a long time to develop
- Includes a control group
What is a variable?
- An attribute that caries or changes between individuals, objects, qualities and properties
What does operationalise the variable mean?
- Need to define how the variable will be measured and turn it into a number or symbol
What is a discrete variable?
- Uses only whole numbers or units, and usually arise from counting
- E.g. number of children in a family
–> can have 1, 2, 4, 6 children, but NOT 2.6 children
What is a continuous variable?
- Can present some values between units
- E.g. height, weight or age
–> Can be 18.6 years old, 1.83m tall or 77kg
What are nominal variables?
- Have no natural order
- E.g. gender, country of birth, religion
–> where it is not possible to allocate a specific quantity or order
What are ordinal variables?
- Rank-ordered and the values for describing the variable are sequentially assigned to represent the logical ordering of the categories
- E.g. ranking satisfaction with treatment from 1=not at all satisfied to 4=very satisfied
- -> in this case, the more satisfied, the higher the values
Difference between interval and ratio scales?
- RATIO SCALES HAS A TRUE ZERO POINT
- -> e.g. 0kg = no weight at all, whereas 0 degrees does not mean that there is no temperature
What is a population sample?
A reference group for drawing conclusions about the population
