Qualitative Research
The field of nursing is characterized by ethical conflicts that stem from the nurses' dealings with the patients as well as the other healthcare workers (Ramos et al., 2015). Most of their situations involve ethical dilemmas where they have to make sound decisions regarding patient care. The research was performed on nursing students to identify the areas that they perceive as involving ethical conflicts and the description of the elements that they take into considerations as they handle the situations. The research design followed a qualitative descriptive case study with around fifty students from three intakes to a degree in nursing (Ramos et al., 2015). The students answered a questionnaire and prepared discussions in focus groups. Results indicated that ethical conflicts in primary care are linked with human and social rights at the hospital.
Quantitative Research
Moral distress has said to be one of the various problems facing the nurses in their work as they take care of the patients in different medical care institutions (Woods et al., 2015). A study was performed to determine the frequency and intensity of moral distress that has been experienced by the registered nurses working in New Zealand. The research design followed a quantitative approach with 1500 questionnaires being sent out to the nurses working in New Zealand (Woods et al., 2015). Four hundred and twelve (27%) were returned (Woods et al., 2015). According to the results, the nurses' distress was caused by witnessing of reduced care due to lack of communication, working with less competent employees and watching patients suffer due to lack of provider continuity.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The significant difference between the two articles is that the quantitative research approaches its methodology part with the methods that can be used to generate numerical data for research purposes. The qualitative research, on the other hand, approaches the research using non-numerical data.
An in-depth look at the qualitative data research states that one of the advantages of the method is that it provides the researchers and their readers with sufficient details in the research (Lewis, 2015). Qualitative data collection methods also consider the feelings and behaviors of the respondents of data collection. The qualitative data research design also has various disadvantages. One of the demerits of qualitative research is that few people are studied at any given time (Lewis, 2015). The other disadvantage of qualitative research is that it is difficult to make systematic comparisons where the responses given by the respondents are extensively different.
Some of the advantages of quantitative data are as follows. Quantitative data analysis allows for the breadth of studies to involve more subjects in given research (McCusker & Gunaydin, 2015). The extensive coverage of research subjects enhances the generalization of results, which eases the analysis. The other advantage of quantitative research is that there are high chances for the accuracy of results (McCusker & Gunaydin, 2015). Increasingly, the use of numeral data in quantitative data analysis leads to the obtention of accurate values (McCusker & Gunaydin, 2015). One of the shortcomings of quantitative research is the research results fail to describe the human behaviors in the research due to their focus on the numerical data.
Scholars across the globe have been involved in an academic tussle where they argue for and against qualitative research being a science (Henwood, 2014). Some of the scholars have argued that qualitative research is a prelude to quantitative research where the former addresses the knowledge of the variables while the latter addresses the magnitude of the identified variables. Impliedly, both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches are relevant to the scientific studies being done worldwide (Henwood, 2014). Thus, the mutually beneficial relationship between qualitative and quantitative research approaches contributes to the development of scientific studies. Other scientists have been arguing that a qualitative research approach is less of a scientific procedure than the qualitative one due to the latter's involvement in numbers.
References
Henwood, K. (2014). Qualitative research. Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology , 1611-1614.
Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches.
Health promotion practice , 16 (4), 473-475.
McCusker, K., & Gunaydin, S. (2015). Research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed
Methods and choice based on the research. Perfusion , 30 (7), 537-542.
Ramos, F. R. S., Brehmer, L. C. D. F., Vargas, M. A., Trombetta, A. P., Silveira, L. R., & Drago,
L. (2015). Ethical conflicts and the process of reflection in undergraduate nursing students in Brazil. Nursing ethics , 22 (4), 428-439.
Woods, M., Rodgers, V., Towers, A., & La Grow, S. (2015). Researching moral distress among
New Zealand nurses: a national survey. Nursing Ethics , 22 (1), 117-130.
