Data Collection a. Data collection was entirely based on human experiences; only individual experiences/attitudes were recorded or used in the study.
b. Data collection strategies are not described in details, but appear to have consisted of an open questionnaires with free responses. These provide appropriate and significantly consistent results.
c. Human rights issues such as privacy are not explicitly addressed in the published study.
d. Data saturation is not described or achieved -- this was a very limited study drawn from a limited pool of informants.
e. Explicit procedures are not detailed in the published study, making the findings impossible to fully replicate. Other qualitative questionnaires that attempt to measure the same phenomenon could be developed, however, in an attempt to verify this study's findings.
Interviews
Interviews were not conducted as part of this study.
Data Analysis a. Data analysis in this study consisted solely of analyzing open-ended responses given by nurse practitioners and students after a forty-two hour rotation given their experiences with and attitude towards mentoring.
b. The researcher reports findings completely in line with the reported responses.
c. The method of concept analysis used in the study is itself fully qualitative and somewhat subjective, but reproducable in large (if not exact) part.
d. The researcher does not explicitly address how accurate or representative the data can be assumed to be, and given the small size of the sample this makes the findings somewhat suspect.
Incredibility
Individual responses are not given in the published study; impossible to determine individual experiences.
Auditability a. The author's thinking is straightforward and easy to follow. In fact, the ease of the assertions made adds to the skepticism with which these claims should be viewed.
b. The research process is documented, though it was brief and consisted only of the administering, collecting,...
The findings could possibly be applicable outside the study situation, however the situation itself is so small that this claim is not easily made.
b. For the same reason as above, the implications of this study are limited in meaningfulness, though a more expansive study would necessarily have broader implications.
c. The method of analysis is completely compatible with deriving only a subjective definition of mentoring and establishing a general idea of the current attitude towards the phenomenon in nursing.
Findings a. The findings are not given a large amount of context, other than a general assertion that the concept of mentoring is changing (without any specifics mentioned).
b. The experience of the participants is not given much space in the published study, leaving the reader with only the knowledge that the participants are involved in nursing.
c. Again, the researcher reports findings consistent with the reported responses, which is hardly surprising, but not completely reassuring in this instance.
d. Little development is given to pre-existing knowledge of mentoring, making the relevance of this study additionally suspect.
Conclusions a. There is little in the way of context given in this study, however the broadness of the claims makes it clear that the author believes this to be applicable in all nursing situations, especially large institutions where teams are involved.
b. The conclusions reflect the findings insofar as they were drawn from the open-ended responses used with the participants.
c. No further research is suggested.
d. I would recommend developing a more specific questionnaire based on the most consistent responses, and distributing this to a much wider pool of informants. Also, further research into mentoring in smaller settings would be beneficial.
e. The significance to nursing is highly applicable and perceptible, though there are equal implications in many other industries and areas.
