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.” 

Let Me Introduce You to INTRODUCTIONS!

(How to Read Research cont.)

In the last two blog entries we talked about what you can and cannot learn from research titles & abstracts. Now, let me introduce you to INTRODUCTIONS/BACKGROUND section of research reports.

  

The introduction/background

“[a] outlines the background of the problem or issue being examined,

[b] summarizes the existing literature on the subject, and

[c] states the research questions, objectives, and possibly hypothesis” (p. 6, Davies & Logan, 2012)

This is the very 1^st section of the body of the research article.  It may or may not have a heading of “Introduction” or “Background” or both.  Both Abstract and Introduction/Background include:

• ·         Problem that the research is investigating &
• ·         Research questions OR hypothesis

In the Intro/Background you will get a more full description of why the problem is a priority for research and what is already known about the problem (i.e., literature review).

Key point #1: Articles & research that are reviewed in the Intro/Background should be mostly within the past 5-7 years.  Sometimes included are classic works that may be much older OR sometimes no recent research exists.   If recent articles aren’t used, this should raise some questions in your mind.   You know well that healthcare changes all the time!!  If there are no recent studies the author should explain.

Key point #2:  The last sentence or two in the Intro/Background is the research question or hypothesis.  If you need to know the research question/hypothesis right away, you can skip straight to the end of the Intro/background—and there it is!

Key point #3: What is the difference between a research question and hypothesis?  A hypothesis is a predicted answer and focuses on one thing causing another thing (i.e., ASA lowers MI risk).   A research question is used when we don’t know enough to guess about the cause and effect, & merely want to describe something. A question may also be used when we want to establish whether 2 things are related to each other, but aren’t ready to identify one as causing the other (i.e., which came 1^st, the chicken or the egg?—these are related, but which was the cause?)

Critical thinking question: One of the following is a hypothesis & one is a research question.  Which is which?

1.   The purpose of this study was to describe the expectations for pain relief of patients with abdominal pain and how their communication with providers relates to their overall pain relief. (Yee et al 2006)

2.  We investigated whether a brief pain communication/education strategy would improve patient pain communication skills. (Smith et al, 2010)

Happy research reading!

Abstracts Are Not Enough! :-)

My last blog post listed the usual sections of a research report (title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, & discussion/conclusion); and I illustrated the amazing things you can learn from only an article title!

This week? Abstracts.   Abstracts are great; abstracts are not enough!

An abstract will not give you enough information to accurately apply the study findings to practice.  An abstract typically summarizes all the other sections of the article, such as  the question the researcher wanted to answer, how the researcher collected data to answer it, and what that data showed.  This is great when you are trying to get the general picture, but you should Never assume that the abstract tells you what you need to know.

Abstracts can mislead you IF you do not read the rest of the article.  They are only a short 100-200 words and so they have to leave out key information.   You may misunderstand study results if you read only the abstract.   An abstract's 33,000 foot level description of a study, cannot reveal the same things that can be revealed in the up-close & personal description of the full article.

So...what is the takeaway?  Definitely read the abstract to get the general idea.  Then read the article beginning to end.  Don't give up reading the full article just because some parts of the study may be hard to understand.  Just read and get what you can. Then try a re-read or get some help understanding any difficult sections.   This is an important step toward EBP.

“IT’S ALL IN THE NAME”
Research articles have relatively standardized sections:
• Title
• Abstract (overview of project that is somewhat incomplete)
• Introduction (purpose, problem, & background)
• Methods (sample, setting, measurements collected)
• Results (data analysis from measurements), &
• Discussion/conclusions (what the data analysis tells us about the original purpose & problem)
These may vary a little from article to article.

Let’s look at the TITLE for a minute. A good title is a mini-abstract. A good title will include:
• Key variables (remember a variable is something that varies, such as fatigue or satisfaction)
• Population studied
• Setting of study
• Design of study

For example take this research article title “What patients with abdominal pain expect about pain relief in the Emergency Department” by Yee et al in 2006 in JEN.
• Key thing that varies? Expectations about pain relief
• Population studied? ED patients with abdominal pain
• Setting? May be the ED
• Design? (not included, but those with experience in reading research would guess that it is probably a descriptive study—in other words it just describes the patients’ expectations without any intervention.)

There you have it! Now you know about TITLES!!

When you have a great project, take credit for your ideas by submitting an abstract to a conference!

Right Writing
"You will not learn to write well by talking – to me, or to anyone else – about writing; you will learn to write well by writing. Talking about writing is like talking about carpentry, or about playing the piano, or about riding a bicycle – interesting, perhaps, but of little help in actually learning how to do any of these things. To learn how to do them, you have to do them, over and over and over. It’s called “practicing.” It’s the same with writing; actually practicing the skill…. I’m not suggesting that I’m not happy to talk to you about your project. But talking to me is much less valuable than you (and most students) think it is.” – D.G.Post (August 2010)

Steps of Writing
 Pre-Writing = Just getting all your ideas down on paper. Order doesn’t matter. (See http://www.studygs.net/writing/prewriting.htm for strategies to start.)
 Writing = Organizing your ideas into paragraphs that communicate
 Re-writing = Editing accuracy of facts, content, grammar, spelling, etc. Make it “sing” (Plan to write your title & introduction during this phase.

Rules of Writing Well
#1 Writing is Re-writing
#2 Writing is Re-writing
#3 Writing is Re-writing

1. Research = Creating new evidence, such as developing a new drug that is needed.

2. Evidence-based practice = using research evidence, such as the RN administering a drug.