The three questions below will guide
the selection of appropriate methods to address the following research
question:
How did the nurses respond
to the survey question, “All of the practice changes so far
have been practical and fit well with the workflow of the unit”?
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What is the response
(Y) of interest and how is it measured? The response of interest is
the nurses’ opinion of the current state of EBP at the hospital
as measured by the rating question “All of the practice changes
so far have been practical and fit well with the workflow of the unit.”
There are five response options for this question expressing the
degree of agreement with the statement. This is an example of a 5-point
Likert scale. The Likert scale is often used in surveys to measure
attitudes and opinions and is an ordinal scale of measure. Ordinal
data has an implied ordering or ranking and is summarized as the proportion
of responses in each of the five rating categories.
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Are predictor variables
(X) mentioned in the problem statement? If so, how many and what
are their measurement levels? The problem statement does not ask about
predictors of attitude toward EBP.
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What are you being asked
to deliver? A data description, an interval estimate, an answer to
a question, or a predictive model? An estimate of the proportion of
nurses that view the current state of EBP favorably will address the
problem statement. Since this is a sample statistic and subject to
sampling error, a confidence interval will provide a range of plausible
values for the true proportion of nurses that view EBP favorably.