2. Introduction Research Design Research design is a set of decisions that make up the master plan specifying the methods and procedures for collecting and analyzing the needed information
31. Comparative descriptive design Group 1 (variables measured) Describe Group ii (Variables measured) Comparison of Groups on Selected variables Describe Development Of hypothesis Describe Interpretation Of meaning
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49. Social class Family Size School Achievement Ability Self esteem e1 e2 e3 Example of Path Analysis
Researchers are not in agreement on how to classify non-experimental studies. Some studies fall exclusively within one of these categories, whereas other studies have characteristics of more than one category.
Eg. Lauri, Lepisto and Kappeli (1997) assessed whether there were differences between patients and nurses in assessing hospitalized patients’ needs. The study compared the findings between the two groups revealing that there were many areas in which patient and nurses’ perceptions were different. This study did not manipulate the variables but assessed perceptions of patients’ need to provided data for future nursing intervention studies.
CORRELATIONAL STUDIES Examines the relationship between 2 or more variables Researcher not testing if 1 variable causes another or how different 1 variable is from another. Researcher is testing if variables covary, ie. As one variable changes, does a related change occur in the other variable. NOTE it is a very useful design for clinical research studies because many of the phenomena of clinical interest are beyond the researcher’s ability to manipulate, control and randomize. For instance, a researcher interested in studying the grief experiences of women who have recently miscarried could not randomly assign subjects to grief and non-grief groups. Also the experience of a miscarriage is a naturally occurring process and as such cannot be manipulated.
