Category Archives: Uncategorized

Correlation Studies: Primer on Design Part 2

REMEMBER:

Research design = overall plan for a study.

The 2 major categories of research study design are:

  1. Non-experimental, observation-only studies, &
  2. Experimental testing of an intervention studies.

Correlation study designs are in that first category. Correlation studies focus on whether changes in at least one variable are statistically related to changes in another. In other words, do two or more variables change at the same time.

Such studies do not test whether one variable causes change in the other. Instead they are analogous to the chicken-and-egg dilemma in which one can confirm that the number of chickens and eggs are related to each other, but no one can say which came first or which caused the other. Correlation study questions may take this form, “Is there a relationship between changes in [variable x] and changes in [variable y]?” while a correlation hypothesis might be a prediction that, “As [variable x] increases, [variable y] decreases.”

An example of a question appropriate to this design is, “Are nurses’ age and educational levels related to their professional quality of life?” Sometimes a yet-unidentified, mediating variable may be creating the changes in one or all correlated variables. For example, rising nurse age and education may make them likely to choose certain work settings with high professional quality of life; this means the mediating variable of work setting—not age or education—might be creating a particular professional quality of life.

Alert! Correlation is not causation.

The biggest enemy was not Russia

Check out this explanation of the famous rose plot about preventable deaths of soldiers!! Lessons to be learned today.

How to speak to stakeholders. How to change nursing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZh8tUy_bnM

Revisiting Field Medicine – My post from 3/20/2020

Field medicine= healthcare in the non-hospital context when higher level technical care is not available.

“A Vivid Testimony”

“History provides current nurses with the same intellectual and political tools that determined nursing pioneers applied to shape nursing values and beliefs to the social context of their times. Nursing history is not an ornament to be displayed on anniversary days, nor does it consist of only happy stories to be recalled and retold on special occasions. Nursing history is a vivid testimony, meant to incite, instruct, and inspire today’s nurses as they bravely tread the winding path of a reinvented health care system.” (American Association for History of Nursing)

Ho Ho How Do You Punctuate That?

Grammar Party

santa

It’s getting to be that time of year when children close their eyes and fantasize about an old, fat man breaking into their house while they sleep naïvely in false security in their bedrooms.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” the man says to himself as he places consumer goods under a tree that for some reason has been moved to their living room.

Wait. Perhaps he says “Ho ho ho!” instead. Just how many exclamation points does this slavemaster of reindeer use?

Let’s turn to the authorities. Here’s what Merriam-Websterhas to say:

Screen Shot 2018-12-06 at 10.24.56 AM.png

There you have it. Three hos and one exclamation point.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas (etc.) to you!

Erin Servais is a professional book editor who is really hoping she won’t get coal this Christmas. Learn more about how she can help you reach your publishing goals here: Dot and Dash website.

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The Difference Between “Historic” and “Historical”

Doing history research?

Grammar Party

Photo of Big Ben at night
London’s Big Ben is a historic clock.

This post will teach you the difference between historic and historical. These two words have similar meanings and get confused a lot, so don’t feel bad that you haven’t memorized their definitions.

Historic describes an important and momentous event, person, place, or thing in history.

  • The Revolutionary War was a historic event in the United States.
  • Marie Curie is a historic figure in scientific history.
  • Big Ben is a historic clock.

Historical describes anything that belonged to an earlier time period and relates to history.

  • Grandma found historical dinner plates at the yard sale.
  • The farmhouse from the 1800s is historical.
  • We looked at a historical map of our town to learn its original design.

To remember the difference, think about historic as being something big (meaningful to many) and historical as something small (meaningful to a few).

For instance, the…

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Where did those comments go??

Hi All out there in the nursing Research/EBP universe.

Notice that TO SEE COMMENTS on the blog post, there is a comments link under blogpost title.  In the most recent post, I added info in a comment about Scholar Scams.

Couldn’t resist sharing our beautiful flowers here in SoCal!

IMG_5965

 

2019: It is…….

I’m not a New Year’s resolution person.  I used to be and then I realized that I wanted to hit the restart button more often than every 365 days.  So…my aim for this blog remains pretty much unchanged:   Make research processes and ideas understandable for every RN.

DifficultToBeSimpleAlthough “to be simple is difficult,” that’s my goalLjourneyet me know what’s difficult for you in research, because it probably is for others as well.  Let’s work on the difficult together so that you can use the BEST Evidence in your practice.

The 2019 journey begins today, and tomorrow, and the tomorrows after that!

FOR MORE: Go to PubMed. Search for a topic of interest. Send me the article & we’ll critique together.