Unit 5 – Understanding Quantitative Research Reports

This week I have a sincere appreciation for the consistency and standardization in the Plano and Clark (2015) text.  I actually have less confidence in my evaluation skills this week due to the content, but found that I was able to navigate through the evaluation tools a little easier because of the standardized format.  Despite my uncertainty and mental wrestling understanding the content I am in a better place this week because of the encouragement and exhortation from my fellow students and professor in this online learning platform.  I am just as overwhelmed, but not as discouraged.  Thank you to my learning community!

As in last week’s blog, for the purposes of clarity I am going to use the headings as provided in the Unit 5 Assessment.

Part A

1. Compare and contrast the elements of a methods and results section of qualitative and a quantitative research report.

I am borrowing a technique that I observed 2 colleagues use last week (credits to edenguessi, awalkinthewoods), and I am just going to insert this portion of the Figure from Plano-Clark and Cresswell (2015) as it is the most comprehensive way to display this information, and the easiest to understand.  (Unfortunately I just taught myself how to do this today, and can’t figure out how to make the picture larger so it is readable from the blog, so readers will need to click on it to view.)

Figure 1

Characteristics Typical of Quantitative and Qualitative Research – Methods and Results Sections Only

2. Discuss your evaluation of the research design in the servant leadership article chosen. Include the article reference, quality rating (0-3) and the rationale/evidence for the rating in the response.

Please refer to Table 1.

The article I chose to focus on this week was “Leadership purposefulness within servant leadership: examining the effect of servant leadership, leader follower-focus, leader goal-orientation, and leader purposefulness in a large U.S. healthcare organization” by J. A. Irving and J. Berndt (2017).  I chose this article because it is a topic that I am interested in and could be generalized to my work environment, however, in doing the evaluations this week I do feel that I bit off a little more than I could chew.

I would also like to make a note here that I think that the format of presenting the tables, and the rating that I observed my colleague use last week with the use of half-marks is actually better than mine (credit to awalkinthewoods).  I did teach myself how to present the table in this format (next week I have to teach myself how to make it larger), but in light of the fact that this is a course on research methodology, I decided to remain consistent and standardized in my rating this week.

Part B

3. Discuss your evaluation of the participants and data collection procedures in the servant leadership article chosen. Include the quality rating (0-3) and the rationale/evidence for the rating in the response.

Please refer to Table 2.

As was my experience last week I am attempting to find the criteria identified in the tools for rating, and when I cannot find the criteria my rating is low.  In many cases I think I am rating the elements too low because I am just not experienced in finding the criteria as outlined and since I don’t personally understand how research is conducted I might be expecting more out of these research studies than can be possibly be completed in one study.

Based on personal experience I struggled with the statement that this was a random sample (see Table 1).  If I understand the study correctly there was quite a lot of survey information required from the participants, so this would eliminate a number of participants in my work place automatically.  There is also a certain subset of employees that always answer surveys, and those who do not, so this behaviour creates a situation where the sample is not random, but I also do not know how you control for this as a researcher.  I don’t see any mention of potential confounding variables which I think needs to be considered.  There is some description of those in the sample, and it does speaks to the education level of the participants but not to classification  (ie. RN, MD, housekeeper, etc).  This would be of interest to me, so I see this as missing information.

Part C

4. Discuss your evaluation of the data analysis and results in the servant leadership article chosen. Include the quality rating (0-3) and the rationale/evidence for the rating in the response.

Please refer to Table 3.

I still really struggled to understand the information presented in Chapter 8 of Plano-Clark and Cresswell (2015) and have little confidence in my ratings for this section.  Even after reading and reviewing this information from this week I do not understand what analyses are supposed to be used when.  I have looked multiple times could not find a clearly identified alpha level in the Irving and Berndt (2017) study.  I think that there is supposed to be one, because there is hypothesis testing taking place and the testing is to determine relationships between variables, but I also cannot find a null hypothesis.  And I honestly do not understand from the reading where an alpha level should be identified or not.  There are also many values listed in the Irving and Berndt (2017) study that are not identified in self-study reading from this week.

The results section of my chosen article is very robust, but I do not know if this means that this is a very high quality quantitative research article, or if this represents a lot of smoke and mirrors.  Again, I think that I potentially have a very narrow, optimistic and naïve view of the world:  I would expect that any researcher is going to be aware that other researchers will be reviewing their work and would not attempt to publish something that would not undergo peer scrutiny.  But this may not be representative of reality.

Part D – Discussion Questions

As a consumer of research reports, I have, to date, skimmed over the methods and results section of research reports.  If I am going to be honest, at this juncture I am likely still going to skim over the data analysis section.  Even after the assigned reading and self-study I don’t think that I have enough applied knowledge to know what this section is telling me, and I certainly will not be able to use this section to determine if this is a high quality quantitative research report.  I do think that I can review the methods, participants, and data collection sections more critically.  For example:  how are the participants assigned and will the results produced from this assignment be applicable to my work?  How was the data collected?  What instruments were used, and would that instrument be valuable to me as a leader/clinician if it is available to me as a leader clinician?  What was the sampling strategy and why, and how was it determined to be large enough for generalizability?  I would now identify these as some questions that would be the most important aspects for me to consider.

I definitely find the data analysis section the most confusing but I think this is because I simply have no practical experience with it.  I was going to make the comment that if I ever get caught up in LDRS 591 I would go back and spend more time in that chapter, but I don’t actually think it would help because it still won’t be applied knowledge.

As I stated in my last blog I do think that being a knowledgeable consumer of the research literature is critical in health care and will be the way of the future.  Patients and professionals alike expect evidence based best practice in medicine and, if they don’t already, they should expect evidence based best practice in their leaders.  The only way to get there is to have leaders who are committed to know what that practice is.

My question for this week is unrelated to the topic we studied.  We are learning about servant leadership and studying the qualitative and quantitative evidence related to the model, behaviours, results, etc.  What leadership models (or if a specific model cannot be identified what leadership behaviours or actions) are promoted or used in your work place?  Are they evidence based, or are they based on traditional leadership styles?  Are leadership strategies in your workplace effective (objective or subjective answers invited), or no longer producing results?

I look forward to the discussion.

References

Plano-Clark, V. & Cresswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2^nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Irving, J. & Berndt, J. (2017). Leader purposefulness within servant leadership: Examining the effect of servant leadership, leader follower-focus, leader goal-orientation, and leader purposefulness in a large U.S. healthcare organization.  Administrative Sciences, 7(10), 1-20.