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Survey data are obtained by means of questionnaires or interviews, using a highly structured interview schedule. Interviews may be conducted face-to-face or by telephone. You can read more about questionnaires and structured interviews in the section on data collection methods on page 24. Some surveys are designed to gather information from the entire population of (for example) a country or town or all the patients who attend a particular health clinic. A survey of an entire population is known as a census. Censuses may be costly and time-consuming to conduct, however, especially if the population under study is large or widely spread. For this reason, it is more usual for part of the population to be surveyed (known as sampling). Assumptions are then made about the health, living conditions, etc. of the entire population on the basis of the data provided by the sample. Issues relating to the size and representativeness of survey samples are discussed in the section on sampling procedures (page 21). Exercise 5 Read the section entitled The study in the article by Allen et al. and that entitled The research project in the article by McBride. Do these describe experiments, quasiexperiments or surveys? Write down your answers and then turn to Section 6 for discussion. In the article by Allen et al., what were the dependent variables? Can you identify any uncontrolled extraneous variables? Was it a double-blind study? In the article by McBride, what was the study population? Write down your answers and then turn to Section 6. Qualitative research It is fairly easy to divide quantitative research designs into methodological types, such as surveys and experiments, but this is not the case with qualitative research. Qualitative research is associated with a number of overlapping philosophies and methodologies such as naturalism, interpretivism, ethnography and phenomenology. It is not uncommon for qualitative researchers to draw on all of these and it may not be easy, for instance, to determine why a study has been described as ethnographic rather than phenomenological. Hammersley & Atkinson (13) give a definition of naturalism: Naturalism proposes that, as far as possible, the social world should be studied in its ‘natural’ state, undisturbed by the researcher. Hence, ‘natural’, not ‘artificial’ settings like experiments or formal interviews, should be the primary source of data. Furthermore, the research must be carried out in ways that are sensitive to the nature of the setting. Interpretivism incorporates the above ideas but also stresses that, even when the social world is studied in its “natural” state, researchers can only understand it through their own five senses and a process of subjective interpretation. Because of this, researchers never have direct page 20 Research awareness in nursing and midwifery: a workbook access to the experiences, understandings and meanings of the people under study. Thus, research documents can represent the views of the people under study but only as interpreted by the researchers. As noted towards the beginning of this section, ethnography (a term with roots in sociology and social anthropology) is primarily concerned with social interaction and meaning, whereas the main focus of phenomenology are the experiences of individuals. Some researchers, however, use the terms “ethnographic” and “phenomenological” as synonymous with “qualitative”. A qualitative approach can enable researchers to explore issues in depth. An experiment may show that a medication is clinically effective, but it is less suited to exploring the experiences, opinions and feelings of patients who have had to decide between having an operation or taking long-term medication for a chronic illness. Data from a quantitative survey may suggest that there is a statistical relationship between urinary incontinence and low selfesteem, but an in-depth qualitative approach may be required to draw out how these two factors relate to each other and how the lives of incontinent people might be improved in both physical and emotional terms. Relatively unstructured data collection methods, such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews, are used in qualitative research so that everyday experiences can be studied and research participants can put forward their own ideas in their own words. Qualitative researchers (particularly ethnographers) often draw on grounded theory (14) when undertaking sampling procedures, data collection and data analysis. This ensures, as far as possible, that the theories that the researchers construct are grounded in the data obtained (rather than in the personal interests or the previous knowledge of the researchers). Grounded theory is discussed further below in the sections dealing with sampling procedures, data collection methods and data analysis. Exercise 6 Read the Method section of the article by King & Jensen. Is the study described as qualitative, ethnographic or phenomenological? Turn to Section 6 for discussion. Other forms of research Research can be described and categorized in various other ways, some of which cross the quantitative/qualitative divide. Two of these types of research will be discussed briefly: feminist research and action research. Feminist research is particularly relevant to nursing because the vast majority of nurses are women. In
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