Introduction
The nursing profession is multifaceted because it relates to human health. A skillful nurse needs to know how to use various types of research to ensure the application of evidence-based practices. Moreover, it helps in working with patients, as well as in identifying and addressing challenges in healthcare facilities. Therefore, one should have a clear understanding of the importance of both qualitative and quantitative research in nursing to apply appropriate research methods for different phenomena.
Discussion
The content and assignments of the course met the learning objectives in terms of the importance of research in nursing. For instance, it expanded the knowledge regarding the types of research and their application in practice. Qualitative research aims at collecting and interpreting non-numerical data. In the nursing context, one can encounter studies that utilize interviews, focus groups, observation, and other similar methods. In turn, interviews or focus groups can be semi-structured or unstructured to obtain varied results. As one could already guess, quantitative research uses numerical data to examine whether some hypotheses can be justified or to find a cause-effect relationship between specific variables. Usually, the data collection approaches include questionnaires, experiments, or database reports. The main benefit of this research type is the absence of subjectivity compared to the qualitative one. Therefore, the course content enriches the knowledge regarding the difference and use of qualitative and quantitative research methods.
There are numerous examples of how both research types can be applied in real practice. Qualitative research is useful when the investigated event cannot be precisely measured or quantified. For instance, when one needs to investigate the patient experience or conduct a case study of an adolescent with depressive symptoms who struggles to mitigate them with professional help, qualitative methods will be suitable. The integral feature of this approach is assuming the dynamic and heterogeneous reality, which facilitates focusing on the process instead of clear results (Renjith et al., 2021). On the contrary, quantitative research helps to obtain accurate results concerning the effectiveness of a new medication compared to a placebo or the impact of taking paracetamol on pain reduction (Cathala & Moorley, 2018). Therefore, the applicability of both research types enhances the quality of healthcare services, patient safety, functional improvement of hospitals, and so further.
When gaining new knowledge, one usually encounters successes and challenges, and this case is no exception. The key achievement is obtaining an understanding of how to apply relevant research methods depending on the phenomenon to be investigated. While a large portion of information regarding qualitative research is clear, the challenges have come with studying the concept of quantitative research. For example, it was complicated to distinguish the experimental and non-experimental designs in this type of research. For example, ‘examining associations’ in the non-experimental study and ‘finding direct relationships’ in the experimental one do not seem to have a significant difference. Thus, it would be helpful to know more about this problem and how to identify when both of them are applicable.
Conclusion
Finally, a professional nurse should know and select an appropriate research design according to the phenomenon to be studied. Both qualitative and quantitative research are frequently used in nursing and represent an essential component in the improvement of health care services. While qualitative study relies on the subjectivity of personal experiences, quantitative research helps identify clear connections among variables using numeric data. Furthermore, both research approaches are applicable in a variety of nursing contexts, which is evident from the examples above. During this week, the main challenge concerned the difference between experimental and non-experimental quantitative designs.
References
Cathala, X., & Moorley, C. (2018). How to appraise quantitative research. Evidence Based Nursing, 21(4), 99-101. Web.
Renjith, V., Yesodharan, R., Noronha, J. A., Ladd, E., & George, A. (2021). Qualitative methods in health care research. International Journal of Preventive Medicine, 12(20), 1-7. Web.