Research Methods for Nursing and Healthcare

John Maltby, Glenn Williams, Julie Mcgarry, Liz Day

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317903222
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Research Methods for Nursing and Healthcare is an essential introductory text for all nursing and healthcare students coming to research methods for the first time or those nurses and healthcare staff wishing to improve their skills in this area. The book includes comprehensive coverage of the main research methods topics, and provides guidance on how to understand and apply research techniques. Everyday nursing examples are used throughout to explain research methods concepts and their relevance to practice. Simple self-assessment tasks are included at the end of chapters; the tests can be undertaken individually, or within groups, to assess the students understanding of the concepts and skills being learnt. Research Methods for Nursing and Healthcare takes the fear out of research methods for all nursing and healthcare professionals.

Excellent introductory text that brings interest to research methods for student nurses. Dr Aimee Aubeeluck, Deputy Director: Graduate Entry Nursing, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy University of Nottingham

"I think this is one of the most readable books on research I have read. Not the most scholarly, but that was not the intention. It is certainly the most user friendly book that will make the whole, often scary, subject of research less threatening." Paula Crick, Principal Lecturer, Faculty of Health, Staffordshire University

"I do think this is one of the most engaging texts aimed at nursing that I have read in a while... This does seem much more exciting and more importantly. real world" Lucy Land, Senior Academic, Centre for Health and Social Care Research Faculty of Health Birmingham City University

"Useful resource for our students dissertation which can be a literature review or a research proposal" Melanie Brooke-Read, Department of Health & Social Studies, University of Bedfordshire

"Excellent text book which actually takes away the 'fear' of research within healthcare"
Angela Cobbold, Institute of Health & Social Care, Anglia Ruskin University

"The text is very comprehensive and I found chapter 7 on action research particularly useful in supporting a student I was supervising. I also like the self assessment exercises which I intend to incorporate in my teaching strategy." Ms. Mulcahy, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork.

Chapter 1

An introduction to research methods

Key Themes

Research proce • Theory • Research • Quantitative research • Qualitative research • Variables • Evidence-based practice

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this chapter you will be able to:

Outline the research process

Understand the nature of variables and how to identify them in research papers

Outline the distinction between theory and research and see how the two are intrinsically linked

Understand that there is a distinction between quantitative and qualitative research

Understand what is meant by variables and how they are important to the research process

Appreciate how theory, research and the research process fit into ideas of evidence-based practice and implementation.

Introduction

You engage in research every day. Don’t believe us? Well take for example the scenario that you get up slightly late and you are wondering whether you should skip breakfast this morning. You know that if you skip breakfast in the morning that it is possibly bad for you, but you know that you will be ok. That is, you have researched it. You know from reading health articles that there is evidence that people who skip breakfast are less able to concentrate during the day. However, you know that you have missed breakfast on a number of occasions and are quite able to skip breakfast regularly without any noticeable effect on your concentration. Therefore the whole issue of whether you can skip breakfast or not, you have researched. You have collected evidence from magazines and your own experiences and you analysed this research and decided that on balance you can skip breakfast this morning. This, basically, is what research is. It is the process of collecting evidence that allows you to make decisions regarding certain questions.

And there is a lot of it. Research is going on all the time. You are surrounded by research. Research is going on every minute of the day, and it is informing all sorts of things, including the type of food that is available to you in your local supermarket, the type of television that is scheduled for you to watch in the evening, what the current interest rates are and what clothes are fashionable. For the large majority of aspects of life out there, research will have been involved. Your local supermarket will have researched what types of food are bought regularly by people in your area, and this will inform what is available. Television researchers will have found out what types of programmes are more popular in the evening and this will inform the schedules. Those determining interest rates will have researched whether prices of a range of commodities will have gone up.

Of course in your profession there is also a lot of research going on. Medical researchers investigate what are the best types of drug. Surgeons will have determined what the best operating procedures are. Your hospital will have researched what is the best type of care to provide to individuals on head injury wards. You yourself will have researched the best way that you can help a patient on a ward who is in distress. The role of research in your profession is crucial, from the types of drugs you administer to the level of care you provide.

As a nurse you will use research in your practice: in your work you must carry out evidence-based practice, that is, nursing involves making decisions in your work on patient characteristics and situations but also on the available evidence. Research informs that available evidence and therefore you need to be able to search out, understand and use research to support your practice. For example the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health, emphasises the importance of evidence-based practice and proper implementation of research by suggesting in their guidelines that all practitioners use the best available evidence for the appropriate treatment and care of people.

The aim of this book is to break down the research process for you and show you how it applies not only to your academic thinking but your everyday practice, so you can carry out evidence-based practice. There are many different types of research out there and we will slowly and deliberately take you through many of these aspects so you can build up your confidence and repertoire of research methods.

1.1 The research process

Formally the research process looks something like Figure 1.1. Generally all research projects will follow a certain order of stage and in Figure 1.1 we have outlined each of these stages. In the first column we outline these stages in everyday language. In the second column, each corresponding row gives more formal titles to each stage.

Figure 1.1 A breakdown of the research process.

Therefore all research processes start with an assessment of what is known about a particular topic (1), going on to some sort of determination of something that we need to know more about with regard to that topic (2). The next stage of the research process is to devise a way to look at that something we need to know about and then after looking at it (3). Then after looking at the topic, we determine what we have discovered about a topic (4). We then present to others on what we have found out about the topic (5). To then present this in more research-based language:

All research processes start with an assessment of what is known or thought about a particular topic (1), = existing literature (theory and research, i.e. books and journal articles on the topic).

Going on to some sort of determination of something that we need to know more about with regard to that topic (2) = research question.

The next stage of the research process is to devise a way to look at that something we need to know about and then after looking at it (3) = method.

Then after looking at the topic, we determine what we have discovered about a topic (4) = analysis.

We then report to others on what we have found out about the topic (5) = presenting our findings.

Let us illustrate with an example you are likely to come across in your sample. Say for example a new disease is discovered that attacks the liver. We will first visit the existing literature, i.e. what theory and research exists. Within this literature we discover there is good and bad news. The bad news is that we find out that there is no cure for this disease. However, the good news is that the literature suggests that the development of a drug will combat the disease, as similar drugs have been used with similar diseases and have cured such a disease. We will then have a research question, will developing a compound of these drugs help us combat the disease? We will have to develop a method for seeing whether it will work, i.e. we will have to trial the drug among patients. We will have to perform an analysis of the effects of the drug on those patients will inform us whether the drug can successfully combat the disease. Let us imagine that the drug is successful (it is too early in the chapter to bring bad news). We would then present our findings (by talking about them, written reports or discussion) back to the medical community reporting on the success of the new drug.

A further point is that what you will find in the research process usually forms a circle of activity (see Figure 1.2), with the presentation of findings feeding into the literature and researchers thinking up further research questions, methods and analysis to carry out leading to more and more presentations of findings. Nonetheless the chapters in this book...