Quantitative research appraisal - Essay Example

Determinations of the effectiveness of pain management, effectiveness of nurse-led diabetic clinic, effectiveness of appropriate or specific dressing methods in management of venous ulcer, effectiveness of specialist nurse practitioner in the accident and emergency as a primary care giver are just few of the numerous examples to assess evidence and change practice based on evidence (Sousa et al., 2007, 502-507). Observational and Interventional Research Designs: The investigator conducting observational research observes both the independent and the dependent variables, when there is insufficient knowledge about a phenomenon, or for ethical reasons or otherwise, an observational design is most suitable.

In experimental research, researchers actively intervene and create the independent variable, which means that people in the sample will be exposed to different treatments or conditions (Driessnack, et al., 2007, 684-688). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs: Experimental designs provide strong evidence about the hypothesis and provide a causal relationship between independent and dependent variables. . However, quasi-experimental designs lack randomization to treatment groups, which characterizes true experiments.

Quasi-experiments, thus, are not as powerful as experiments in establishing causal connections between interventions and outcomes (Coughlan et al, 2007, 658-663).Differences between Inferential and Descriptive Statistics: Statistics are either descriptive or inferential. Descriptive statistics are used to describe and synthesize data. Averages and percentages are examples of descriptive statistics. Actually, when such indices are calculated on data from a population, they are called parameters.

Inferential statistics on the other hand is used to draw some inferences out of the numerical data (Zellner et al., 2007, 55-59). The title of the research article chosen by the author to base this assignment is "Randomised controlled trial to compare surgical stabilisation of the lumbar spine with an intensive rehabilitation programme for patients with chronic low back pain: the MRC spine stabilisation trial" by Fairbank and coworkers published in the British Medical Journal (Fairbank et al.

, 2005, 1233). Purpose: The purpose of this particular study is to assess the clinical effectiveness of surgical stabilization in the form of spinal fusion compared with that with intensive stabilization for patients with chronic low back pain. The design obviously was a multicentric randomized controlled trial (Cook et al., 2008, 128-133).Randomization or random assignment involves placing subjects in groups at random. Random essentially means that every subject has an equal chance of being assigned to any group to avoid systematic bias in the groups that could affect the dependent variable.

Randomization remains the most trustworthy and acceptable method of