Embedded Files
shown in bold italic are defined in the Glossary (Section 5, page 49). 3.3 Biographical details of the researchers Details about the researchers’ qualifications, current posts and/or academic background are sometimes provided. This is good research practice, as it facilitates critical consideration of the claims made in the document. For example, a team of doctors researching nurse education may employ different research methods and/or come to different conclusions than a team of nurses or a mixed team of doctors and nurses. Similarly, a member of the public and a nurse may be likely to take different research approaches and interpret data differently. 3.4 Source(s) of research funding Some small research projects conducted by practitioners do not have any outside source of funding. Much medical and nursing research, however, is funded by a variety of external agencies, including drug and other commercial companies, government departments and charities. Sources of funding should be explicitly stated in research documents so that readers can assess whether the nature of the funding agency might have influenced the choice of methods and/or the interpretation of the data. For example, it might be reasonable to be sceptical about research that claims that low-fat diets are unhealthy if it has been funded by a manufacturer of dairy products. Example If you look at the first page of each of the three articles you will see that all the authors have nursing qualifications, such as RN and RGN. Some also have academic qualifications such as PhD, MA and MN. The latter suggest that the authors have had training in research methods and/or experience of carrying out research. Some of the authors’ current posts are also given. Only article 2 by McBride gives enough detail to enable us to see how the current post of the author relates to the subject of the research. Only article 3 by King & Jensen acknowledges a source of research funding. We do not know whether the research projects described by Allen et al. (article 1) and McBride had any external funding and, if they did, which organizations provided it. Nevertheless, there are no obvious ways in which the source of funding might have affected the conduct or findings of the three research projects. If, for example, the project described by Allen et al. had tested a commercially available teaching package, we might have wondered whether the study had been funded by the company producing the package or by a commercial rival. Reading and evaluating research reports page 11 3.5 Details given in the abstract Not all research documents include an abstract (a short summary near the beginning). Abstracts are, however, always included in articles published in good quality health journals such as the Journal of advanced nursing and the British medical journal. University theses include an abstract, while some reports open with an executive summary (similar to an abstract). Books do not usually contain an abstract, although multi-author works sometimes have an introductory chapter by the editor(s) giving an overview of the material in the book. An abstract should provide an accurate summary of the content of the research document and should outline the main features of the research, such as the aims, methods, findings, conclusions and recommendations. Abstracts are useful in two main ways. 1. An abstract can often provide a quick assessment as to whether a document is relevant to your topic of search or your clinical practice. An abstract can therefore save time (and sometimes money), as it can help you to decide whether it is worth obtaining and/or reading a document. 2. An abstract may provide indications that a document has serious methodological flaws, or that the authors have reached far-fetched conclusions. Such suspicions can then be confirmed or rejected by careful reading of the main body of the document. Example All three articles reproduced at the end of this workbook have an abstract at the beginning. Read these three abstracts through. There are obvious differences in the style of presentation and the amount of detail given. The abstract of the article by Allen et al. is extremely short. It does not make the aims of the research or sampling procedures clear. Research design and data collection methods are not mentioned. It suggests that the findings are unequivocal (this will be discussed later). The abstract provided by McBride is much longer and this is reflected in the greater detail provided about aims, sampling, data collection, findings and recommendations. It does not, however, give a specific name to the research design. The abstract of the article by King & Jensen is the clearest of the three. This is partly because it is presented under separate headings (a presentational feature required by the journal publishing the article). We are given clear details under the headings Objective, Design, Setting, Participants, Results and Conclusion. You will better understand the issues involved in producing a good abstract as you read through the rest of Section 3. 3.6 The aims of the study The aims of the research should be made clear early in the document (usually in a section entitled Introduction or Background). The aims will probably have been influenced by the researchers’ previous experience and/or study of relevant literature and may be stated in terms of objectives, research
Google Sites
Report abuse