Comparing Qualitative and Quantitative Peer-Reviewed Studies

¶ … PubMed search terms used to initially identify a qualitative study were the following: nursing qualitative. A large number of citations were retrieved, but the selection was further limited by only those available as free full-text articles through PubMed Central. This provided some idea of what is available and after skimming down the citations the topic of tuberculosis treatment compliance was chosen. The search terms used next were the following: tuberculosis treatment compliance.

A large number of studies were found and after skimming down the first page of the retrieval results a qualitative and epidemiological (quantitative) study were identified, both of which focused on patient compliance in third world regions of the world, Burundi and India. The study conducted by Zaman and colleagues (2014) was an epidemiological study examining the percentage of residents in Assam, India testing positive for tuberculosis who sought treatment early or late following diagnosis, in addition to the percentage of these two groups who complied with the treatment plan.

The results indicated that residents seeking treatment within 6 weeks of diagnosis had a 92% cure rate, while only 40% of those seeking treatment 6 weeks after diagnosis were cured. The reason this is a quantitative study is because it tests whether early seeking of treatment is a predictor of treatment compliance, among several other variables being tested. The use of statistics to quantify variables is a defining feature of quantitative studies and statistics were used in this study (e.g., Chi square test).

The authors of this study also concluded that motivating patients to seek early treatment will lower the prevalence rate of Assam residents testing positive for tuberculosis, which is a deduction. The deductive process is another defining feature of quantitative studies, as is using objective measures like smear-positive TB tests to quantify the percentage of treated patients who were cured or failed to comply with treatment recommendations.

The title of the article published by Carlsson and colleagues (2014) contains the term qualitative study, which made it easy to select this study from the many possible choices. This study also addressed patient compliance during tuberculosis treatment, but from the perspective of nurses treating TB patients in Burundi. The method used to better understand nurses' roles and experiences was semi-structured interviews; therefore, the interview questions encouraged open-ended answers that could not be quantified or analyzed using statistics. This study therefore subjective, rather than objective.

The most common factors affecting treatment compliance, according to the interviewed nurses, was socioeconomic and its effect on patient clinic transportation and nutrition support. Qualitative research is inductive, which means it generates theories that can be tested in the future using quantitative study designs. In this case, it would be interesting to compare treatment compliance outcomes after a transportation and nutrition intervention was implemented. Qualitative studies also tend to.