Chapter 3: Defining the Research Question Flashcards
(29 cards)
How to select a topic for the research question
Questions grow out of a need to know something that is not already known, resolve a conflict, confirm previous findings, or clarify some piece of information that is not sufficiently documented.
Where do research questions come from?
Clinical experience
Clinical theory
Professional literature
- Gaps
- Conflicts
- Replication
What is clinical experience?
A clinician’s knowledge, experience, and curiosity will influence the types of questions that are of interest.
What is clinical theory?
To formulate a specific research question, a clinician must first examine the principles behind a theory and then determine which clinical outcomes would support or not support the theory. The answers will be the basis for a research question.
What is professional literature?
Reference to professional literature plays the most essential role in the delineation of a research problem and ultimately in deriving the specific research question.
Professional literature provides the basis for developing a research problem in several important ways.
What gaps and conflicts are found in professional literature?
Literature may point out holes in professional knowledge, areas where we do not have sufficient information for making clinical decisions.
Another common source of ideas derives from conflicts in the literature when studies present contradictory findings.
What is study replication?
Replication of a study is a useful strategy to confirm previous findings, correct for design limitations, study different combinations of treatments, or examine outcomes with different populations or in different settings.
Replication is an extremely important process in research because one study is never sufficient to confirm a theory or to verify the success or failure of a treatment.
How do you develop research rationale?
Start with a systematic review or meta-analysis
Use theoretical framework
What are the 4 general types of research?
- Comparison
- Exploratory
- Descriptive
- Methodological
Describe comparison research.
Comparison defines a cause-and-effect relationship using an explanatory model. This includes the gold standard RCT as well as comparative effectiveness studies.
Describe exploratory research.
Exploratory looks for relationships to determine how clinical phenomena interact. These studies are considered observational because they do not involve manipulation of variables.
Describe descriptive research.
Descriptive seeks to characterize clinical phenomena or existing conditions in a particular population. Qualitative research is a unique type of descriptive research that focuses on systematic observation of behaviors and attitudes as they occur in natural settings.
Describe methodological research.
Methodological, stems from the lack of appropriate measuring instruments to document outcomes. Studies may involve the investigation of reliability and validity in measuring tools to determine how different instruments can be used meaningfully for clinical decision-making.
How do you frame a clinical research question?
P: population or problem
I: intervention
C: comparison or control
O: outcomes
What is an independent variable?
A predictor variable is an independent variable.
It is a condition, intervention, or characteristic that will predict, or cause a given outcome.
This is the I and C in PICO.
What is a dependent variable?
The outcome variable is called the dependent variable, which is a response or effect that is presumed to vary depending on the independent variable.
This is the O in PICO.
What are the levels of independent variable?
In comparative studies, independent variables are given “values” called levels. The levels represent groups or conditions that will be compared. Every independent variable will have at least two levels.
What are the operational definitions of variables?
Defines a variable according to its unique meaning within a study.
- Should be sufficiently detailed that another researcher could replicate the procedure or measurement.
What is the final step in delineating a researchable question?
Clarify the objective of the study
The objectives may be presented as hypotheses, specific aims, the purpose of the research, or they may be phrased as a research question.
What is a hypothesis?
A declarative statement that predicts the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
The research hypothesis states the researcher’s true expectation of results, guiding the interpretation of outcomes and conclusions.
What are explanatory studies?
Nondirectional hypotheses do not predict a direction of change.
Directional hypotheses not only describe the relationship between variables in terms of a difference, but they also assign a direction to that difference.
What are exploratory studies?
Hypotheses can also be phrased to predict a relationship between variables, rather than a difference.
Directional predicts the presence of a relationship between two variables and the direction of that relationship.
Compare simple and complex hypotheses.
A simple hypothesis includes one independent variable and one dependent variable.
A complex hypothesis contains more than one independent or dependent variable.
Describe a complex hypothesis?
Nondirectional because of the potential difficulty in clarifying multiple relationships.
Efficient for expressing expected research outcomes in a research report, but they cannot be tested.
Must be broken down into several simple hypotheses.
