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Quantitative Research Paper

1169 Words5 Pages

The significantly increasing need of research seen today has been predominantly propagated by the implementation of evidence-based practice, in the healthcare industry, whereby, various types of research have been constantly used as evidence in order to support and inform practice. Research is constantly needed to develop and improve the body of evidence/knowledge in occupational therapy that is available to practitioners, to provide clients with the most effective and up-to-date treatment (Ottenbacher 1987 : 4). The evidence-based practice aims to encourage healthcare professionals to provide the best quality of care to their patient, by synthesising clinical expertise, with the use of the best evidence available to aid in clinical decision-making, …show more content…

It is primarily concerned with drawing conclusions on the experiences of people as a large group, rather than individual responses and is best at examining general trends of data from these groups. Representativeness is a key element in quantitative research, in which the sample population is large and should truly represent the wider population from which the researcher has claimed to draw on (Newell, R. and Burnard, P. 2010: 65). This has brought about a widely-used sampling technique, called simple random sampling, whereby, each member of the target population has an equal chance of being included in the sample. This ensures a lower chance of bias of the sample population, towards any particular type of person, and therefore making it more statistically reliable. Quantitative research produces numerical data by using several data collection methods such as surveys, observations and tests, which can be used to determine cause-effect relationships, predictions of cause-effect relationships, epidemiological information and treatment comparison studies, with the help of different types of quantitative research techniques. There are two smaller branches stemming from quantitative research, namely, observational studies and experimental studies. Observational studies focus on collecting data about research participants, without including any research interventions. Such studies are usually used in healthcare, to collect data for epidemiology, due to its ability to describe the size of a problem caused by a disease and the characteristics of people with the particular problem. The relationships between characteristics of the participants and their health status can also be investigated using certain types of

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