Web activities

These activities include brainstorming activities, further reading, weblinks to external sites, and enable you to examine and relect upon the methods of both real-world studies and the methods chosen by fictional nursing and midwifery students introduced in chapter one.

Activity 4.1: An Example of a Correlation Study 

Access and read the following paper in which the relationship or correlation between smoking and lung cancer was first documented:

Doll, R. and Hill, A.B. (1950) Smoking and carcinoma of the lung, British Medical Journal 2(4682): 739–748.

Activity 4.2: Discovering RCT, Cohort, Case-control, and Survey Studies

Identify a topic from practice that you think would be appropriate for an RCT. Why would an RCT be an appropriate research method to investigate this topic?

Identify a topic from practice that you think would be appropriate for a cohort study. Why would a cohort study be an appropriate research method to investigate this topic?    

Identify a topic from practice that you think would be appropriate for a case-control study. Why would a case-control study be an appropriate research method to investigate this topic?   

Identify a topic from practice that you think would be appropriate for a survey. Why would a survey be an appropriate method to investigate this topic?    

Activity 4.3: Different Views on Quantitative Research

The class of 2016 have been discussing their views on quantitative research.

Richie and Jasmine feel more comfortable with quantitative approaches to research. Richie likes the organised and structured approach and the fact that large samples are used. Jasmine thinks there is less chance of quantitative research being biased and likes the fact that the findings can be generalised.

How do the group members’ opinions compare with your thoughts and feelings about quantitative research?