Quantitative Research In Nursing

Assignment 2

Quantitative Research Paper:

Introduction:

Haws, J., Ramjeet, J., & Gray, R. (2011). A national survey of GP and nurse attitudes and beliefs towards depression after myocardial infarction. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 20, 3215-3223.

The researchers performed a quantitative cross-sectional survey; the purpose of this study was to investigate the different attitudes from healthcare professionals to depression following a myocardial infarction. This article was published on The Journal of Clinical Nursing in 2011, which is a high impact forum. The researchers had identified the aim and the need of the study clearly. The researchers aimed to target nurses and GPs due to the researchers’ statement that healthcare practitioners underestimate

Scores were also reversed when items were negatively worded. Internal consistency of items was tested using Cronbach’s alpha and correlations were explored using Pearson’s correlation. For this article items with a p value of less than 0.01 was considered to be significant rather than 0.05.

Cronbach's alpha test was carried out in this research paper however, the results of the internal reliability testing was below the acceptable average of 0.5 for non-clinical research in three of the five subscales. This shows that the results are therefore unreliable; in addition the authors did not mention the rest of the Cronbach's alpha values. Also the authors should have tested also for external reliability apart from internal

The authors also pointed out that the framework is suitable when dealing with data from an oral source. The researchers claimed that techniques to establish rigour have been started since the beginning of the study. Establishing rigour in a qualitative study is very important to have valuable research. The authors of the articles claimed that; coherence, relevance, auditability, reflexivity and credibility were all considered relevant to this study and that they were incorporated in different ways within the study. The researchers also failed to examine their own role during analysis of data in preventing any potential bias.

Although the authors claimed that the study was rigorous the authors failed to explain what was done to ensure this. Furthermore, the authors did not explain the data analysis in-depth. The authors merely explained the Anderson and Jack (1991) framework. The researchers also did not mention all information regarding credibility of findings. The authors did not mention by whom the data was analysed, if there was more than one analyst or if respondent validation was carried