There are several times when, in the middle of or after particular interventions, nurses would ask themselves questions such as “What if we had done it this way?” or “What would have been the results if …” These, and many other questions are the foundations and impetus to nursing research. Nursing research impacts current and future professional nursing practices, and therefore, it is an important component of the educational process in nursing. Additionally, nursing research enables professional nurses to determine the most effective and best practices which can be implemented to improve patient care. It promotes the nurses’ lifelong professional development and also supports the fact that nursing is a professional discipline. It is important for nurses to understand the basic principles of research because it helps them improve their clinical expertise and develop their personal knowledge. Also, by understanding the basic principles of research, nurses understand the implementation of changes that support excellence in nursing care. Furthermore, nurses who understand the basic principles of nursing research can retrieve, read, critique, and apply nursing research. The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine the different ways in which nursing research can be conducted to study nursing problems. It covers the research designs (quantitative and qualitative research designs), and how research is critical in developing a credible evidence-based nursing practice.
Quantitative research describes a means used in research to test objective theories through an examination of the relationships that exist between the different variables being considered. A variable refers to a factor in an experiment or study that can be changed or controlled to observe the effects of another variable. In a quantitative research design, the data collected during the study is in numeric or quantified form and is referred to as statistical. evidence (Younas, Pedersen and Tayaben, 2019). Under quantitative research, quantitative data allows for an accurate approach to the analysis of the problem and measurement of the outcome. Because it is based on the number, quantitative research is generally precise, and one of its purposes is to be deductive in approach (developing a hypothesis based on existing theory and then designing a research strategy to test the hypothesis) rather than being inductive.
The importance of using the quantitative approach in nursing research is that it is based on numbers, and this makes it precise and accurate. This accuracy is important in research, especially in the field of nursing. When it is applied appropriately in research, the results of quantitative research can be generalized.
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