The Process of Research Flashcards
What are the five phases of the research process?
1) THINKING: identifying a problem and purpose; reviewing the literature
2) PLANNING: choosing study design, planning approach to sample, data collection, etc.
3) IMPLEMENTING: recruiting participants and collecting the data
4) ANALYZING: analyzing data (e.g. statistics) and interpreting the findings
5) INFORMING: disseminating results (e.g. journal articles, presentations)
What are the three ways of categorizing research?
1) Paradigm’s
2) Levels
3) Methods
Define paradigms:
Assumptions about how the world works; what we believe to be true about the world
Describe the difference between (post) positivist and constructivist paradigms:
POST-POSITIVISM: positivism is a form of realism, where the world is seen as objective regardless of the human experience (e.g. there would still be an objective reality of the world without humanity). The world is knowable, testable, and nothing can be said to be true without objective data. Post-positivism is this way, but admits that science isn’t always 100% correct, and gives room for error while still believing reality is fixed and measurable.
CONSTRUCTIVIST: the basis of qualitative research, as this view believes that the world isn’t fixed, but rather a construction of how people perceive it. It is focused on the subjective reality of how the world is experienced.
What is descriptive research?
Description of experiences/phenomenon’s
What is correlation research?
Finding correlations (e.g. more sleep and better exam scores are considered a correlation)
What is quasi-experimental research?
- An experiment where you can’t control everything; no such thing as a perfect control group
- When you can’t control all variables (experiments all variables are expected to be controlled in order to find cause/effect)
What is an experiment?
Research where all variables are accounted and controlled for in order to obtain the most correct data possible to find a cause/effect relationship or answer hypothesis
What are the distinguishing methods of quantitative research?
- Test theories
- Control (i.e. controlling as many variables as possible)
- Instruments (what is used to physically gather/test data)
- Numbers (everything gets transformed into a #) (e.g. cultures become numerical groups)
- Statistical analysis (using statistics to interpret data and find significance) (e.g. p values)
- Generalization (taking findings from a study and being able to disseminate to different and/or more groups) (e.g. data about COPD patients being generalized to CF patients)
What are the distinguishing methods of qualitative research?
- Develops theories (to later be tested; the area where observations are gathered and ideas are shared)
- Shared interpretation
- Communication and observation
- Words (focus is rarely on the numbers; more the qualitative experience)
- Interpretation
- Uniqueness
What types of research categories are there for quantitative?
- Randomized clinical trial (RCT) (e.g. pharmaceutical research)
- Survey research (e.g. fill from a scale 1-5)
- Evaluation research (e.g. faculty evals, self-evals)
- Secondary analysis
- Meta Analysis
Describe the difference between a secondary analysis and a Meta Analysis:
A Secondary Analysis goes back to a study already completed, and runs secondary analysis’ on things not tested the firs time (E.g. using a different statistical method to see if there is a new result). A Meta Analysis compiles old data says about the same phenomenon in order to get the big picture from studies combined; can either confirm/deny what small studies have said (since they are fallible).
What types of research categories are there for qualitative?
- Phenomenology (looking at the lived experience, e.g. how was experience of this class?)
- Ethnography (looking at cultures and their values, e.g. nursing culture and first “feeling” like a nurse)
- Grounded theory (social, but processes in the way that people make decisions (e.g. how do peers in nursing help us make decisions? One of the best to develop beginnings of a theory to later be studied quantitatively)
- Historical research (looking back at historical documents/events, e.g. Florence Nightingale’s journals to learn about themes of nursing)
- Meta Synthesis (the same as a meta analysis essentially, but it is focusing on qualitative research only)
What is quantitative experimental?
- Researcher manipulates/controls the variables, and observes effect in other variables
- Evaluates cause/effect relationship
- RCT’s and quasi experimental studies
- E.g. does a pre-op intervention program increase self-efficacy after post-op?
What is quantitative non-experimental?
- Describes or looks at relationships or correlation between variables
- Variables NOT manipulated by the researcher (might be unethical to do so)
- Descriptive, correlational
- E.g. correlation between HRT use and breast CA
