Test Your Knowledge: Qualitative versus Quantitative

Question 1

1. What is the effect of interruptions while nurses are giving medications on the number of medication errors they make?

A (Quantitative)
B (Qualitative)

Answer 1

ANSWER: A (Quantitative)
The study would involve a count of the number of medication errors; medication errors CAN be quantified.

Question 2

2. What is like for women to be the victims of physical abuse?

A (Quantitative)
B (Qualitative)

Answer 2

ANSWER: B (Qualitative)
The study would involve soliciting in-depth verbal reports about abusive experiences and what they meant to the women. It would be difficult to quantify these experiences.

Question 3

3. What does it mean to a patient to receive a diagnosis that he or she has colon cancer?

A (Quantitative)
B (Qualitative)

Answer 3

ANSWER: B (Qualitative)
The researcher would seek to obtain detailed verbal narratives about the person’s experience—again, hard to quantify.

Question 4

4. What is the effect of a nursing smoking cessation intervention on the number of cigarettes that patients smoke?

A (Quantitative)
B (Qualitative)

Answer 4

ANSWER: A (Quantitative)
The study would collect information about the number of cigarettes participants had smoked; the number of cigarettes is quantifiable.

Question 5

5. Do the babies of women who do not get prenatal care have lower birth weights than other babies?

A (Quantitative)
B (Qualitative)

Answer 5

ANSWER: A (Quantitative)
The study would involve collecting information about numerical birth weight values.