DATA COLLECTION SECTION!

(Methods in the Research Madness cont.)

Key point!  The data collection section of a research article includes: who collects what data when, where & how.

In previous blogs we’ve looked at title, introduction, and other elements of methods section (design, sample, & setting).   In this one let’s take a look at data collection.

Data are a collection of measurements.  For example, scores on a classroom test might be 97, 90, 88, 85, & so on.  Each single score is a datum; collectively they are data.

What data are collected is answered in this section.  The data (or measurements) can be numbers or words/themes.   For example, numbers data might be how many RNs in a hospital are men and how many are women.   An example of word data would be themes without any counting of things (e.g., in a study RNs may describe their roles as “caregiver” or “professional” or “interprofessional”; we would not count how many RNs used each word).   Sometimes a researcher collects both number and word data in the same study to give a more complete description.

How the data are collected includes what instrument or tool was used to gather data (e.g., observation, biophysical measure or self-report) and how consistently & accurately that tool measures what it is supposed to measure (e.g., reliability & validity).   Also included is who collected the data and the procedures that they followed—how did they obtain consent, interaction with subjects, timing of data collection and so on.

Now you know!

Critical thinking question:  You are interested in the level of pain control among patients on your unit.  Think of a way to measure this with numbers data and also a way to measure this with word data.  Who would ask what, when, where & how?

METHODS in the Research Madness

Research article elements are: Title, Abstract, Introduction/background, Methods, Results, Discussion, & Implications/Conclusions

METHODS =

•       Design
•       Sample
•       Setting
•       Data collection/Instrument 

Sometimes there are sub-headings of design, sample, setting, & instrument.

Sometimes not.

•       Key point #1: Design= overall plan for answering the question or proving the hypothesis.  The 2 basic types of design are 1) experimental & 2) non-experimental.   In experimental, the researcher does something to the subjects and measures the effects of that something.  In non-experimental, the research merely observes and describes what is happening without doing anything to change it.  (Note: Quasi-experimental designs are a subset of experimental ones—the researcher just doesn’t control as many variables.)

•       Key point #2: Setting=where the study is conducted: home, hospital, office, classroom, on an ocean cruise, or other.

• Key point #3: Sample includes who/what subjects were in & excluded from the study; how many subjects were in the study; & whether subjects were selected using random methods or non-random methods.   In random selection every eligible subject has the same chance of being selected. That’s called probability sampling.  An example is drawing names from a hat.  In non-random selection only the most nearby subjects are asked to be in the study. That’s called non-probability or convenience sampling.  An example, using a clipboard to survey people who walk into a mall one day. [Note: Subjects can be people, animals, charts, hospitals, or nations.]

(Whew!....Enough for now.  In the next blog we’ll look at data collection methods.)

Critical Thinking Exercise:  Find the Design, Setting, & Sample in this excerpt of Methods from Mohammedkarimi et al, (2014): 

“A double-blind, randomized clinical trial (RCT) was performed among 90 adult patients with acute headache in Shahid Rahnemoon Emergency Center of Yazd city of Iran (45 patients in lidocaine group and 45 patients in placebo group). Patients with history of epilepsy, allergy to lidocaine, signs of skull base fracture, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) < 15, patients younger than 14 years and patients who had received any medication in previous 2 h were excluded.”