The research process: Nursing

Nurse Miguel works in a physical rehabilitation facility. One of his clients, who has chronic back pain related to a car accident, mentions, “I feel so much better since starting yoga. It’s made a big difference in my pain!” Nurse Miguel realizes this isn’t the first client who has mentioned yoga has improved their pain, so he wonders, “How can I know if yoga is an effective treatment for chronic, trauma-related back pain?”

He decides to develop a research project to better understand how yoga affects back pain. Before he develops his study, he reviews some of the basic principles of research to better understand the steps of the research process.

Okay, so research is a systematic process of validating, refining, and generating knowledge. It can be used to answer questions that are encountered when providing care, like “What kind of diet is best for a client with heart disease?” or “What types of exercise help reduce joint pain in arthritis clients?”

The first step in the research process is to identify a research problem. A research problem is sometimes referred to as a “gap” in knowledge. It is a specific issue, often identified by nurses in their everyday clinical practice that needs further investigation,

Gaps can address specific issues with client care that don’t already have a clear answer. This can be because there is not enough research demonstrating significance of a practice or there has been limited application to practice.

Nurse Miguel couldn’t find any information on the impact of yoga for the treatment of chronic back pain caused by trauma. He recognizes this is a gap in the literature that he might be able to investigate with a research study.

The next step is to complete a literature review. To complete a literature review, the researcher will carefully search through scientific databases in order to find sources on their research topic. The goal of the literature review is to develop a comprehensive understanding of what is currently known about the topic, it is sometimes referred to as “the state of the science.”

This might include information like what types of studies have already been done to investigate the topic, or if the topic has been explored for one client population but not another. Miguel will search through research databases to better understand everything that is already known about the effects of yoga on chronic back pain.

He discovers many sources about how yoga has been proven to improve back pain in acute injuries but, he only finds one study about how yoga might be helpful in clients with chronic back pain. He realizes while reading the article that while the study focused on chronic back pain, it was in clients with osteoporosis and not trauma.

Once Nurse Miguel has a better understanding of the state of the science, he can develop a formal hypothesis. A hypothesis is a prediction that will be tested during the research. The hypothesis is usually presented as an if-then statement that predicts what the researcher thinks will happen.

So, after completing the review of literature, Nurse Miguel designs his research hypothesis: If clients with chronic trauma-related back pain perform daily yoga, then they will have a reduction in their reported pain scores. Now, in Nurse Miguel’s hypothesis, he has two variables: yoga and pain scores.

Variables are the concepts that are measured, manipulated, or controlled in a study. Oftentimes, researchers want to understand the relationships between variables and will predict those relationships in their hypothesis.

The two most common types of variables are: The independent variable can be controlled by the researcher and is sometimes referred to as the “cause,” or the variable that influences the dependent variable. The dependent variable, on the other hand, is sometimes referred to as the “effect” or the outcome variable, because changes in the dependent variable are thought to be caused by the independent variable.

In Nurse Miguel’s hypothesis, yoga is the independent variable because Miguel will control who participates in yoga and who does not. Pain scores are the dependent variable because it is assumed the amount of pain will be determined by whether or not the client participates in yoga.

Okay, once you have determined your hypothesis and defined your variables, it is time to select a research design. A research design is the strategy used to complete a study and can be classified as either qualitative or quantitative.