Nursing Resource Guide

For your first several assignments, you will need to find articles that present either quantitative or qualitative research. This page includes tips for finding these kinds of articles in CINAHL.

You will also see tips for limiting your search to research articles and eliminating systematic reviews and meta-analyses from your search results. You will need to find these kinds of articles for future assignments, but for now, these instructions will help you focus on basic research articles. 

You can search for qualitative or quantitative articles pretty easily by adding a term to your search. 

1. In CINAHL, click on "Advanced Search" below the search box. This gives you three search boxes instead of just one. 

2. Enter your search terms for your topic in the first and/or second search boxes. If you need more search boxes, click the plus sign to the right of the bottom box

3. Enter the word "qualitative" or "quantitative" (depending on what you are searching) in the bottom search box. Here is an example:

*Remember* Setting up your search terms this way will help, but does not guarantee that all your results will be either quantitative or qualitative. You will still have to read through the research and use what you have learned in class to determine whether the research uses a quantitative or qualitative (or mixed) methodology.

Watch for these features when determining if an article has empirical research. They may appear in the abstract, or you may need to skim the text of the article to find them.

• Introduction: a statement of background or purpose (what was being studied and why). May review prior studies on the same topic.
• Description of the design and/or method of the study (the experimental group or sample, control, variables, number of test subjects, test conditions, etc.)
• Results, or report of the findings (usually in numeric form, tables, or graphs, often with statistical analysis)
• Conclusions that can be drawn from the results (maybe labeled discussion or significance)
• Footnotes and/or a bibliography
•  

Remember, qualitative research can be empirical, too. The easiest way to tell if you're looking at quantitative research is to look at the results. If they are in numeric form, with tables or graphs, it's most likely quantitative. Keep in mind that some studies use more than one type of method, and may include both quantitative and qualitative components.

Example of a quantitative studiy:

Taggart, L., Coates, V., & Truesdale-Kennedy, M. (2013). Management and quality indicators of diabetes mellitus in people with intellectual disabilities. Journal Of Intellectual Disability Research, 57(12), 1152-1163. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2012.01633.x

Qualitative research studies factors that cannot be easily quantified. Qualitative research is common in the social sciences.

A classic form of qualitative research is the focus group, often used for market research. In a focus group, a few people are interviewed in depth about particular products or services. Because the sample group is so small, their opinions cannot be effectively analyzed using statistics, but their impressions can offer valuable insights into the ways that consumers think.

Another example is the case study, common in psychology and medicine. In a case study, a doctor or counselor documents in detail one patient’s experience of a disease or disorder. Case studies are particularly useful when the disorder is rare and thus cannot be studied in large populations.

Example of a case study:

Pitts, S., Bergamo, D., Cartaya, C., & Gore, B. (2014). Efficacy in the Reduction of Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infection in a Patient With Intestinal Failure: An Ethanol Lock Pediatric Case Study. Journal Of The Association For Vascular Access, 19(4), 217-220. doi:10.1016/j.java.2014.07.003