Assignment: Template Quantitative Study
Assignment: Template Quantitative Study
Your name:
Article reference (in APA style):
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What exactly is a critique? Simply put, a critique is a critical analysis carried out for a specific purpose. Nurses critique research for three reasons: to improve their practice, broaden their understanding, and provide a foundation for conducting a study.
When the goal is to improve practice, nurses must pay special attention to questions like these:
Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment
Are the research findings applicable to my practice environment and situation?
What additional research or pilot studies, if any, are required before putting findings into practice to ensure both safety and effectiveness?
What effects might a proposed change in practice have on other aspects of practice?
Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment ORDER AN ORIGINAL PAPER ON NOW!
You will be critiquing a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods research study of your choice to help you synthesize your learning throughout this course and prepare you to use research in your practice. Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment
If the article is not available in full-text through the Walden University Library, you must e-mail it to your instructor as a PDF or Word
attachment.
CRITIQUE OF QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH The research problem and purpose
What is the problem and goal of the cited study? (Sometimes, only the purpose is stated explicitly, and the problem must be deduced from the purpose’s introductory discussion.) Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment
Research Questions and Hypotheses
What are the study’s hypotheses (or research questions/objectives)? (Occasionally, the hypotheses or study questions are listed in the Results section rather than preceding the methodology report.) Occasionally, there will be no mention of hypotheses, but whenever inferential statistics are used, the reader can deduce what the hypotheses are by looking at the statistical analysis results.) Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment
Review of Literature
What is the level of quality in the literature review? Is the literature review up to date? Relevant? Is there evidence that the author critiqued the literature or simply reported it? Is there an integrated summary of the current knowledge base on the research problem, or does the literature review include opinion or anecdotal articles with no synthesis or summary of the whole? (The literature review is sometimes included in the introductory section without being explicitly identified.) Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment
Framework Theoretical or Conceptual
Is it possible to identify a theoretical or conceptual framework? If so, what exactly is it? Is it a nursing framework or one from another field? (Sometimes, no explicit theoretical or conceptual framework is identified; additionally, many “nursing” research studies draw on a “borrowed” framework, such as stress, medical pathology, and so on.)
Population
What type of population was sampled? What method was used to sample the population? Explain the method and criteria. How many people were included in the sample?
Human Research Subjects’ Protection
What safeguards were put in place to protect human research subjects?
Design of Research
What was the study’s design? Please describe if the design was based on previous research or pilot studies. Template for Critique of a Quantitative Study Assignment
Measurement Instruments and Strategies
What instruments and/or measurement strategies were used to collect data? Was information about the measurement instruments’ dependability and validity provided? If so, please describe it.
Data Collection
What procedures were used for data collection?
Data Analysis
What methods of data analysis were used? Were they appropriate to the design and hypotheses?
Interpretation of Results
What results were obtained from data analysis? Is sufficient information given to interpret the results of data analysis? Critique Template for a Quantitative Study Assignment
Discussion of Findings
Was the discussion of findings related to the framework? Were those the expected findings? Were they consistent with previous studies? Were serendipitous (i.e., accidental) findings described?
Limitations
Did the researcher report limitations of the study? (Limitations are acknowledgments of internal characteristics of the study that may help explain insignificant and other unexpected findings, and more importantly, indicate those groups to whom the findings CANNOT be generalized or applied. It is a fact that all studies must be limited in some way; not all of the issues involved in a problem situation can be studied all at once.)
Implications
Are the conclusions and implications drawn by the author warranted by the study findings? (Sometimes researchers will seem to ignore findings that don’t confirm their hypotheses as they interpret the meaning of their study findings.)
Recommendations
Does the author offer legitimate recommendations for further research? Is the description of the study sufficiently clear and complete to allow replication of the study? (Sometimes researchers’ recommendations seem to come from “left field” rather than following obviously from the discussion of findings. If a research problem is truly significant, the results need to be confirmed with additional research; in addition, if a reader wishes to design a study using a different sample or correcting flaws in the original study, a complete description is necessary.)
Research Utilization in Your Practice
How might this research inform your practice? Are the research findings appropriate to your practice setting and situation? What further research or pilot studies need to be done, if any, before incorporating findings into practice to assure both safety and effectiveness? How might the utilization of this research trigger changes in other aspects of practice? Critique Template for a Quantitative Study Assignment
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.