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Nursing Research Guide

A guide for conducting nursing research at KUMC.

Data Types - Quantitative vs Qualitative

Data Types

Quantitative Data

  • Quantitative data is measurable, often used for comparisons, and involves counting of people, behaviors, conditions, or other discrete events (Wang, 2013).
  • Quantitative data uses numbers to determine the what, who, when, and where of health-related events (Wang, 2013).
  • Examples of quantitative data include: age, weight, temperature, or the number of people suffering from diabetes.

Qualitative Data

  • Qualitative data is a broad category of data that can include almost any non-numerical data.
  • Qualitative data uses words to describe a particular health-related event (Romano).
  • This data can be observed, but not measured.
  • Involves observing people in selected places and listening to discover how they feel and why they might feel that way (Wang, 2013).
  • Examples of qualitative data include: male/female, smoker/non-smoker, or questionnaire response (agree, disagree, neutral).
  • Example of qualitative data from a health care setting includes (Curry, Nembhard, & Bradley, 2009):
    • Measuring organizational change.
    • Measures of clinical leadership in implementing evidence-based guidelines.
    • Patient perceptions of quality of care.

Qualitative Research

This study design is based on methods of observation and enquiry, often using methods like interviews, focus groups, or observations to gather rich, descriptive information. This makes qualitative studies especially useful for studying human experiences, social interactions, and unique contexts.

Qualitative study designs enable health researchers to explore the meaning of human experiences and thereby create "possibilities of change through raised awareness and purposeful action” (Taylor & Francis, 2013). 

Qualitative study designs are beneficial for research questions looking to provide unique insights into specific contexts or social situations. However, they're not as strong when wanting to find direct cause-effect links or where a statistically significant result is required (Taylor et al., 2006). 

A table of qualitative data and purposes
Method Overall Purpose Advantages Challenges
 Surveys Quickly and/or easily gets lots of  information from people in a non threatening way
  • can complete anonymously
  • inexpensive to administer
  • easy to compare and analyze
  • administer to many people
  • can get lots of data
  • many sample questionnaires already exist
  • might not get careful feedback
  • wording can bias client's responses
  • impersonal
  • may need sampling expert
  • doesn't get full story
 Interviews

Understand someone's impressions or experiences

Learn more about answers to questionnaires

  • get full range and depth of information
  • develops relationship with client
  • can be flexible with client
  • can take ime
  • can be hard to analyze and compare
  • can be costly
  • interviewer can bias client's responses
Observation

Gather firsthand information about people, events, or programs

  • view operations of a program as they are actually occurring
  • can adapt to events as they occur
  • can be difficult to interpret seen behaviors
  • can be complex to categorize observations
  • can influence behaviors of program participants
  • can be expensive
Focus groups

Explore a topic in depth through group discussion

  • quickly and reliably get common impressions
  • can be efficient way to get much range and depth of information in short time
  • can convey key information about programs
  • can be hard to analyze responses
  • need good facilitator for safety and closure
  • difficult to schedule 6-8 people together
Case studies

Understand an experience or conduct comprehensive examination through cross comparison of cases

  • depicts client's experience in program input, process and results
  • powerful means to portray program to outsiders
  • usually time consuming to collect, organize and describe
  • represents depth of information, rather than breadth

 

In qualitative research, only a sample (subset) of a population is selected for any given study.Three of the most common sampling methods are:

  • Purposive sampling
    Participants are grouped according to preselected criteria relevant to a particular research question; sample sizes often determined by theoretical saturation (new data doesn't bring additional insights)
  • Quota sampling
    While designing a study, it is determined how many people with which characteristics need to be included as participants
  • Snowball sampling
    Participants or informants use their social networks to refer the researcher to other people who could potentially participate in the study, often used to find and recruit “hidden populations"

Searching CINAHL for Qualitative Research

You can go to CINAHL to search for Qualitative Research. One of the things you can do is to add the following concepts to your search:

(MH "Qualitative Studies+") OR (MM "Focus Groups") OR (MM "Interviews+") OR (MM "Narratives+") OR “focus groups” OR interviews)

Searching PubMed for Qualitative Research

You can go to PubMed to search for Qualitative Research. One of the things you can do is to add the following concepts to you search:

"Qualitative Research"[Mesh] OR "Focus Groups"[Mesh] OR "Interviews as Topic"[Mesh] OR interviews OR “focus groups”