NUR 501 Module 2 Discussion Qualitative And Quantitative Research Design

This week’s discussion is an opportunity for us to explore the world of research in the nursing field, starting with the fundamentals, which is understanding the differences between qualitative and quantitative research designs. A qualitative research design is a type of research that explores real-world problems, providing insights into various phenomena that we cannot put into numerical data (Tenny et al., 2022). Such phenomena, within the realm of nursing, range from patient and nurse experiences, to attitudes and perceptions of nurses and patients. Thus, a qualitative research design could be used to explore and gain deeper insights into participants’ attitudes, perceptions, experiences, and even behavior (Tenny et al., 2022). An example is a recent study by De Benedictis et al. (2022) to explore the experiences of frontline nurses during the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. The advantages of conducting a study using a qualitative research design is that we can explore participants’ lived experiences, answering the questions “how” and “why.” This research design enables us to explore issues that we cannot quantify or put in numerical data. Thus, we can also say that another advantage of qualitative research designs is that they enable us to put human touch into research, enabling us to obtained nuanced insights beyond what data can explain.

Various study designs lend themselves to qualitative research, including ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, and narrative research. Ethnography is a qualitative research design involving the direct involvement of the research in the participant’s lived experiences, where the researcher attempts to gain insights by living with and observing the participant’s actions, behaviors, and events, among others, within their natural environment (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). Grounded theory, on the other hand, involves the attempt to generate theoretical models to explain a phenomenon or relationships between various phenomena (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). Phenomenology entails explaining why participants behave in a particular way from their own perspective, which is slightly different from what ethnography studies (observed behavior, which requires researcher’s own interpretation). Finally, the narrative research design applies the storytelling technique to provide rich and nuanced insights regarding participants’ lived experiences. As you will note, these designs have slight differences, but all rely on nonnumerical data to explain the “how” and “why” things are the way they are. That is the essence of a qualitative research design.

On the other hand, a quantitative research design involves conducting studies with specific focus using narrowly defined research designs to generate statistical or numerical data that can explain relationships and more (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). The goal of a quantitative research design is to provide objective, unbiased interpretation. The data generated in a quantitative study can be used to explain, describe, as well as predict relationships between two or more variables. In such studies, which often involve manipulation of variables, researchers clearly define their variables to facilitate analysis post-study (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). Other important elements of a quantitative research design include a hypothesis (research’s prediction), study groups (randomized or conveniently sampled based on common, desirable characteristics), and outcomes (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). Quantitative research designs come in three types, including correlational, quasi-experimental, and descriptive research. Correlational research designs help researchers investigate the cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables, such as the study of the relationship between sleep quality and cardiovascular health (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). A quasi-experimental research design, on the other hand, evaluates the underlying cause of a problem to study its impact or influence on variables, without necessarily meeting the rigor of a true experimental design (Ingham-Broomfield, 2014). Finally, a descriptive research design offers an opportunity to numerically describe existing things or relationships, or discover a new meaningful by gleaning through data (example, Ojedoyin & Jegede, 2022). Choosing a quantitative research design depends on the kind of relationships a researcher wants to investigate and whether this research would require a true experimental or quasi-experimental design to accomplish. Thank you all!

References

De Benedictis, A., Gualandi, R., Saccoccia, S., Pensieri, C., Piredda, M., De Micco, F., Marchetti, A., Facchinetti, G., Pasquarelli, A. A., De Carolis, C., Di Blasio, I., Tartaglini, D., & Alloni, R. (2022). Back to the roots of nursing: Qualitative study on