Nursing Research Guide

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.

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”