Paravic-Klijn Et Al. (2009) Is an Example

¶ … Paravic-Klijn et al. (2009) is an example of a strong level of research evidence. This is not only because the study was quantitative but because it used an integrative massive amount of material as its source. These included 119 Latin American nursing journals and 13,208 scientific documents.

The study was prompted by the realization that nurses working in regions of Latin America have difficulty in accessing research that is authored in their language and structured according to their experience and that, moreover, much of the methodology of the research material (produced by Latin American medical practitioners) is flawed. This, in turn, has historically had a negative impact on the nursing practice in Latin American regions of America. Wanting to study how Latin American nursing research developed (and the language of its scientific communication), the authors investigated relevant nursing research materials from different publications and types of documents that were geared towards, or that were about, the Latin American medical community. All were published by Latin American nursing institutions or were written by a nursing professional or practitioner who had a Latin American nursing background.

The authors used bibliomaniac indicators to examine the documents:

These indicators are measures obtained from a statistical analysis of the basic elements of scientific publication: scientific journals and published documents. According to Maltras (2003), three types of bibliometric indicators are used to measure quality (impact factor), relationships (collaboration), and scientific activity (quantification and temporal evolution of production). In this study, we used the latter, which can be obtained through simple computations of journals and articles or some of their components (titles, authors, affiliations, and so on) (p.55)

In other words, the authors used statistical data to investigate whether any patterns existed in the examined material and whether these patterns differed from comparative research on the subject. The reliability of the document recovery was further corroborated by quantitative work.

In short, the methodology used (statistical / quantitative) and the vast amount of material that was employed -- all from authoritative sources -- gives this study a level of strong research evidence.

Lasater and Nielson (2009) also demonstrate a strong level of research evidence as is evidenced by the fact that their study is quantitative. Their intention was to study the effects of concept-based instruction on nursing. More specially, they investigated the effect of concept-based learning activities on the judgment of nursing graduates in a certain institution. Their study was quasi-experimental using control groups of students who were both exposed and not exposed to concept-based activities. Although strong in research evidence, this study is on a lower continuum than the previous. This is due to the fact that the former was a meta-analysis of experimental, quasi-experimental, and outcome studies, whereas this was a quasi-experimental study with students selected from one particular institution and already differentiated into two separate groups. The lack of randomization made this quasi-experimental and gave it a lesser degree of strength. On the other hand, the statistical data, specifically the ANOVA, reinforced strength of the research.