Quantitative research: Designs relevant to nursing and healthcare

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the main quantitative research designs relevant to nursing and healthcare. It outlines some strengths and weaknesses of the designs, provides examples to illustrate the different designs and examines some of the relevant statistical concepts. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about the place of quantitative research in nursing.

An overview of research designs relevant to nursing: Part 1: quantitative research designs

“…The two most common types of quantitative descriptive designs are: case control and comparative (1,6) . or II research questions (2,(7)(8) (Table 1). Three of the most common correlational designs include:…”

Research capability in doctoral training

“…As Thompson et al (2004) found, British nurses need more evidence that is 'grounded in clinical reality'. Experimental methods arguably provide the most convincing means of establishing the effectiveness of nursing interventions (Poole and Jones, 1996;Seers and Crichton, 2001). In this study, experimental tools/techniques were strongly associated with the 'Clinical' setting, but just 11% of doctoral studies used experimental methods, and the 'Clinical' setting accounted for only 14% of theses.…”

The Challenges of Conducting a Nurse-Led Intervention in a Randomized Controlled Trial with Vulnerable Participants

“…The reputation of rigorously conducted RCTs enables the findings of a well-developed and applied study to be considered high level evidence on which future practice in healthcare is based [3, 6]. However, RCTs involving complex psychosocial interventions can be challenging to implement with vulnerable participants, including those with a mental illness such as schizophrenia [7].…”