Post Graduate-Diploma in Nursing

[Dated]

PHC 3005 (Health and Social Science Research Approaches)

Explore the application of qualitative and quantitative strategies in health research

Definition of Qualtitative and Quantitative Research

Quantitative and qualitative are the two research strategies and methods that are widely used when conducting the health research. Quantitative research is defined as the systematic empirical investigation of certain healthcare situation in which techniques such as computational, mathematical and statistical is commonly used. The objective of quantitative research strategies is critically examine and employ scientific and mathematical models, frameworks, theories, assumptions and hypothesis relative to particular healthcare phenomena. This scientific or mathematical measurement is at the core of quantitative research studies used in the healthcare research because it enables to examine and understand the fundamental connections pertaining to the mathematical expression in the model as well as empirical observation of the quantitative relationships. The data gathered through the quantitative strategies is employed in the numerical format such as numbers, percentages, statistics and the like. In the elementary sense, when using the quantitative research, researcher takes the specific and focused question and thereby gathers the useful numerical data from the respondents or participants which could be significant to answer the questions pertaining to health problem or health issue. In addition to this, the researcher analyzes and interprets that data using the statistics. In quantitative strategies, it is hoped that certain numbers provide the justifiable and unbiased result which could be generalized to large extent and in numerous settings of populations.

On the other hand, Qualitative research strategies focuses on philosophical assumptions which asks the broad questions and gathers the data from the respondents regarding their perceptions, behaviours and opinions to particular research problem or research questions. Unlike quantitative research strategies, this research focuses on particular themes and then goes on describing and closely examining the information pertaining to the themes and patterns exclusive to healthcare issues or problems based on responses of set of participants. In broader sense, qualitative research focuses on employing an inquiry or survey method which is based on critically appraising the previous theoretical and academic disciplines. Qualitative research also greatly supports to relate other social issues with healthcare issues and study the key factors pertaining to and significant to healthcare problem. This requires that researcher himself/herself should closely observe the information for in-depth understanding and understands the behavior of patients and those people that have significant healthcare problems. In elementary sense, qualitative research method helps to answer the question within the context of how and why and provides the decision making rather than just explaining the research question within the context of where, what and when particular healthcare issues has occurred.

Types of Qualitative Research

Research Participatory

In this research method the activitiy to combine the research liking and form of action in a field under observation by the researcher, with the participation of personnel like nurses and doctors for the subject investigation. It can involve the scenarios like the changes in the population relation to some chronic disease or the number of HIV ...