So many great resources are out there at your fingertips.   In the next few blogs, I’ll point you to some of them.

If you have not yet discovered the hidden jewel of the tab, “Research Made Simple,” on the Evidence-Based Nursing website at http://ebn.bmj.com/ , you should check out its full text pdf articles. An especially nice resource if you are in graduate school or maybe even a BSN course on research.

Here is a sample of one from June 9, 2014 of the population of articles at EBN.

“Sample selection is a key factor in research design and can determine whether research questions will be answered. …It is critical to take the time to clearly identify the population of interest for the specific research question. Nursing researchers are usually interested in answering questions about very specific patient populations which can span an incredible array of possibilities applying to international, national, local and organisational contexts. Research populations closely reflect nursing specialties, some of which are gender (eg, pregnant women) and age specific (eg, adolescent diabetes). It is rarely feasible to conduct a study that reaches every patient in the population of interest, therefore a subset or sample of that population is selected for study.” (para 1-2 Retrieved from http://ebn.bmj.com/content/17/2/32.short?g=w_ebn_research_tab ) [note: I added the bold]

I invite you to use the comments section to post URLs for other great sites!

Critical Thinking: Read the previous blog on representatives & then decide for yourself whether this single EBN article on sampling is representative of clear & simple explanations. Samples can be things, not just people. What questions should you ask me about my sampling procedure?

For More: Check out tab “Research Made Simple,” on the Evidence-Based Nursing website at http://ebn.bmj.com/ .   OR try this <5 minute simple sampling youtube video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-gLeYuDZw