Nursing Research - Chapter One PDF

# Chapter One ## Introduction and development of nursing research ## NURSING AND RESEARCH - To understand nursing research as a concept, it is essential to understand each word separately: "nursing" and "research". - **International council of nursing defined nursing:** "Nursing encompasses auton...

# Chapter One ## Introduction and development of nursing research ## NURSING AND RESEARCH - To understand nursing research as a concept, it is essential to understand each word separately: "nursing" and "research". - **International council of nursing defined nursing:** "Nursing encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well and in all settings. Nursing includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people." - **Advocacy, promotion of a safe environment, research, participation in shaping health policy and in patient and health systems management, and education are key nursing roles.** (International Council of Nurses, 2002) - Based on the definition of nursing, nurses perform several essential roles including the provision of: - Health promotion - Caring for sick people - Work with healthcare teams - Mentoring and teaching other healthcare team members, especially new nurses. - **Research:** - **Definition:** "The research could be defined as a disciplined approach to creating new knowledge or the use of existing knowledge to generate new concepts, methodologies, and understandings." (Senge & Scharmer, 2008) - **Systematic method problem:** This involves formulating hypothesis, collecting facts or data, analyzing the facts and reaching a conclusion either in the form of solutions towards the concerned certain generalizations theoretical formulation. - **Search for knowledge:** Research can also be defined as a systematic and scientific search for getting relevant answers on any specific topic. It is a scientific enquiry into a subject, a movement from the unknown to the known. ## PURPOSE /OBJECTIVES OF RESEARCH 1. **To gain familiarity with a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it:** Studies with this objective are known as **exploratory or formative research studies**. 2. **To portray accurately the characteristics of a particular individual, situation or a group:** Studies with this objective are known as **descriptive research studies**. 3. **To determine the frequency with which something occurs or with which it is associated with something else:** Studies with this objective are known as **diagnostic research studies**. 4. **To test a hypothesis of a causal relationship between variables**: Studies with this objective are known as **hypothesis-testing research studies**. ## Research as Nursing Advancement Tool - Nurses work in different settings that manage wide arrays of patients' needs. - Healthcare system expansions correlate positively towards nursing professional development and career advancement. - Research is one of the most important tools to achieve this goal. - According to the nursing research definition, research creates new knowledge or uses existing knowledge to know more about a specific issue, therefore, nursing professional development relies heavily on the amount of research undertaken to expand nursing knowledge. ## International and National Nursing Research History - **Florence Nightingale:** From an international stand, Florence Nightingale was the first nurse who documented nursing practice through her book "Notes on Nursing" in 1859. - **Description of the book:** This book is a description of environmental factors and their effects on human wellbeing. - The history is full of international nursing research milestones; however, the following milestones could be the most important (See table 1.1.): ### Table 1.1 International Nursing Research History | Year | Milestone | |---|---| | 1900 | American Nursing Journal begins publication. | | 1936 | Sigma Theta Tau awards first nursing research grant in the United States. | | 1965 | American Nurses Association (ANA) begins sponsoring nursing research conferences. | | 1993 | Foundation of National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). | | 1993 | Foundation of Cochrane Collaboration. | | 1995 | Foundation of Joanna Briggs Institute, an international EBP collaborative in **Australia**. | | 2000 | Foundation of Canadian Institute of Health Research. | ## National Nursing Research History - **Google Scholar Database:** Searching the google scholar database for the keywords "Saudi nurses" revealed a growing number of published studies since 1981. - **1981-1990:** During this period, there were about five published studies, of which only two were mainly in the nursing field. - **1991-2000:** There was a slight increase in Saudi nursing research during this period, with around 21 articles being published. - **2001-2010:** Nursing research production doubled five times (98 articles) during this period. - **2011-2020:** The last decade witnessed a huge increase in Saudi nursing research (970 articles), where Saudi national nurses were leading the majority of these publications. - **The first Saudi nursing publication was published in the American Journal of Nursing 1956**. ## RESEARCH PARADIGMS - **Research paradigm definition:** "The set of common beliefs and agreements shared between scientists about how problems should be understood and addressed." (Kuhn, 1970) - **Characterizing research paradigms:** "Research paradigms can be characterized by the way scientists respond to three basic questions: **ontological**, **epistemological** and **methodological questions**" (Guba, 1990). - **Ontology:** The study of beings or their being. *What is reality?* - **Epistemology:** The study of knowledge. *How we know?* - **Logic:** The study of valid reasoning. *How we reason?* - **Ethics:** The study of right and wrong. *How we should act?* - **Phenomenology:** The study of our experience. *How we experience?* ## PARADIGMS OF QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH - **Quantitative research:** Produces numerical data (numbers), while qualitative research produces textual information (qualities). **Example:** - When meeting a new student for the first time, you try to understand them through their qualities or attributes such as their talks, dress, and facial expressions. - Once your relationship with this new student continues, you understand more information about them, like how many times they have been absent or their course grades. - **If we face the research problem/phenomena for the first time, then we prefer to use qualitative approaches to explore it.** - **On the other hand, if the research problem/phenomena are generally understood, then we use quantitative approaches to measure or explore in more numeric detail.** ## Qualitative research - **Definition:** Qualitative research helps researchers to structure non-numerical data about participants' beliefs, experiences, and behaviors. - **Categorization:** It can be categorized into three main types: - **Observational studies** - **Interview studies** - **Documentary/textual analysis of various written records** - **Approach:** The qualitative research approach starts with a broad question such as what is the nursing students' experience in their first clinical day? - **Meeting:** Answering this question requires meeting the students during their clinical experience and asking them questions to explore their experiences. - **Rich Descriptive Data:** Collected information will produce rich descriptive data that enable the researcher to understand those students' experiences. ## Quantitative research - **Definition:** Quantitative research uses statistical data to investigate variables of a phenomenon. - **Example:** The relationship between nurses' continuous learning hours and nurses' competency. - **Classification of variables:** Variables in quantitative research are classified into the **dependent variable**, which is the result of a cause (nurses' competency) and the **independent variable**, which is the cause or the influencing factor (continuous learning hours). - **Statistical significance:** The strength of the relationships between study variables is evaluated by the statistical significance. ## Systematic Review - **Definition:** Systematic review is the application of scientific strategies that limit bias by the systematic assembly, critical appraisal and synthesis of all relevant studies on a specific topic. - **Differences from literature review:** Unlike the literature review, the systematic review is an independent study to explore specific inquiry based on "distinct and exacting principles". - **Purpose:** The purpose of the systematic review is to synthesize related studies to identify evidence within these studies answering the research question. ## Meta-Analysis - **Similarities to systematic review:** Meta-analysis is similar to systematic analysis. - **Combining raw data:** However, it works by bringing studies' raw data together to form one data-set. Meta-analysis is the top level of the evidence because analyzing a huge data-set allows it to identify more accurate results and estimations. ## Meta-Synthesis - **Analysis:** Meta-synthesis is the analysis of the qualitative studies' themes "results" with an interpretive approach. - **Identifying themes:** Researchers identify related qualitative studies, analyze the studies themes, and construct the conclusions. - **Aim:** The aim of meta-synthesis is to formulate descriptive synthesis to understand the answer to a specific question of phenomena. ## TYPES OF RESEARCH 1. **Pure Research:** - Gathering knowledge is termed as 'pure' or 'basic' research. - It's used to gather knowledge in order to formulate or generalize theories. - In medicine, basic research is generally at the cellular level for studying various biological processes. 2. **Descriptive Research:** - The major purpose of descriptive research is a description of the state of affairs as it exists at present (e.g., survey or fact finding inquiries of different kinds). - The researcher has no control over the variables. - **Analytical research:** The researcher has to use facts or information already available, and analyze these to make a critical evaluation. - **Correlative research:** This aims to discover the existing relationship between two or more aspects/variables. It is also known as comparative research. - **Explanatory research:** This attempts to clarify or explain why and how any particular research problem arises and can be solved. - **Exploratory research:** This is undertaken to explore a new area. The objective of exploratory research is the development of hypotheses rather than their testing. 3. **Quantitative Research:** - Quantitative research is based on the measurement of quantity or amount. - **Structured research:** It's also known as structured research. - The objectives, design, sample, and all other factors influencing the research are determined. - The research problem and its solution will be expressed in terms of quantity and hence statistical analysis is adapted in this type of research - **Qualitative research:** This is also known as unstructured research. It studies aspects related to quality/kind or texture. **Example:** Behavior science (i.e., why people think or do certain things). 4. **Other types of research:** - **Conceptual research:** This is related to some abstract idea or theory. - It's used by philosophers or thinkers for developing new concepts. - **Empirical research** (based on experiments) is also known as experimental type of research. It is data-based research, coming up with conclusions which are capable of being verified by observation or experiment. - **Phenomenology:** The study of our experience. ## NURSES' ROLES IN RESEARCH - **Nurses' role:** It's nourished by nurses' needs to improve patients' care and develop the nursing profession. - **General roles in research:** These may include the following: - Update nursing procedures and guidelines - Identify evidence-based practice - Research data collection - Attend research conferences or seminars - Disseminate nursing research results - **Participate in nursing research:** This is the most important role that professional nurses and nursing students have to do. - Review research proposals and give expert advice - Assist researchers to identify eligible study participants - Guide patients to participate in research studies ## CHARACTERISTICS OF RESEARCH - **Characteristics:** - Research is directed toward the solution of a problem. - Research requires expertise. - Research emphasizes the development of generalizations, principles, or theories that will be helpful in predicting future occurrences. - Research is based upon observable experience or empirical evidences. - Research involves gathering new data or using existing data. - Research is characterized by carefully designed procedures that apply rigorous analysis. - Research strives to be objective and logical, applying every possible test to validate procedures and data collected and the conclusions are generalized. ## CRITERIA OF GOOD RESEARCH 1. The purpose of the research should be clearly defined, and common concepts should be used. 2. The research procedure used should be described in sufficient detail to permit another researcher to repeat the research for further advancement. 3. The procedural design of the research should be carefully planned to yield results that are as per objective. 4. The researcher should report with complete frankness, flaws in procedural design and estimate their effects upon the findings. 5. The analysis of data should be sufficiently adequate to reveal its significance, and the methods of analysis used should be appropriate. The validity and reliability of the data should be checked carefully. 6. Conclusions should be confined to those justified by the data of the research.