Tools and Settings
Content
Questions and Tasks
(Brigham Young University-Idaho, 2024.)
In this class, you will learn two types of skills:
The scientific method is a set of prescribed steps used to test a proposed explanation of something that happens in the world. There are six basic steps in the scientific method. They are:
To learn about this method, you will carry out your own scientific study using these methods.
As you can see above, the last step listed in the scientific method is Share Results. This is actually an oversimplification. Scientists share their thoughts, methods, and conclusions with each other the entire time they are working through a problem. They share their ideas in meetings, emails, grant proposals, study proposals, planning meetings, poster sessions, and just over lunch when they attend conferences for their field. Science is best done with other scientists.
(Brigham Young University-Idaho, Pryor, 2024.)
The most formal way that scientists communicate with each other is through research articles. A research, peer-reviewed, or scholarly article is an article that appears in a peer-reviewed journal that is reviewed by experts in the field for quality, accuracy, and relevancy. The authors are sometimes asked to make changes before the article is accepted for publication in the journal. This process helps to improve the quality and credibility of the published articles. In order to determine if a journal is peer-reviewed, you can examine the journal's website to determine if there is a peer-review process associated with the journal. Only certain types of articles undergo peer review. Synthesis, original research, and case studies are examples of articles that are peer-reviewed. Book reviews, opinions, and commentaries normally do not undergo peer review. Original research and case studies are usually organized with an abstract, introduction or background, methods, results, and discussion and/or conclusion. Many library databases let you filter your results to include only peer-reviewed articles.
(Frederiksen, 2020)
Your first steps in conducting research are to choose an interesting topic and then to form it into a question. In this course, the topics are chosen for you. You will be able to choose one of the topics that most interests your group. In the real world you might choose a topic based on the following criteria:
To form your research question, try adding your topic to one of the suggested questions below. Each of these represents a different type of research you might do.
You will be given a list of articles to review for your chosen topic and you will be required to find two additional research articles. Based on what you read, you might decide to change your topic or question slightly.
When thinking about your research question, the question should express a relationship between two or more variables. For example, "How is A related to B?" It should be clearly stated in a question form, such as, “How do mosquito nets (A) affect the incidence of malaria (B)?” or “How does parental education level (A) affect children’s vaccination status (B)?”
Once you have selected your topic and reviewed literature related to it, narrow it down to something that can be realistically researched and answered. Ask Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How questions.
You might begin by asking a series of PICO questions. A way to formulate an answerable question using the PICO model could look something like this:
Some examples of how the PICO method is used to refine a research question include:
Figure 3.2 Basic literature review process
After you have your research question, you will search the literature for relevant articles. You will then use these articles to write the introduction of your research paper. This introduction is sometimes called a literature review. The purpose of conducting a literature review is to locate the existing peer-reviewed articles that are relevant to your topic. This helps you examine what research has been done on the topic and what research still needs to be done on the topic.
No matter the type of study design, you will need to collect data. In observational studies, you need to decide what exact behaviors you are looking for. If you were doing a clinical trial, you would need to decide what health outcomes to measure and how to record that information. In this class, you will learn how to conduct survey research for two reasons. First, you will conduct a survey in this class. Second, the skill of designing a quality survey transfers into every other study design.
(Brigham Young University-Idaho, Pryor 2024.)
There are 9 basic steps in designing a survey.
When you design a survey, you want the information to be accurate and useful. The following tips will help you design a good survey question:
You will be using Google Forms to construct your survey. Google Forms offers the following options for survey questions:
To have a clear understanding about your participants, you need to include demographic questions in your survey. Demographic questions may come across as personal, but they are necessary to determine differences between populations. A demographic is a characteristic of your participants and is helpful in categorizing your participants into smaller groups. The following are examples of demographic questions that can be useful in your survey creation:
Age: There are a number of ways to ask this question. You can ask the participant to fill in the blank ("What is your age in years?") but this sometimes will get left blank. You can also give them a dropdown menu with every number from 18 to 100. This option is the best for calculating statistics about age. The third option is to organize the ages in ranges. This is less helpful if you want to calculate the mean age of your participant group. Figure 1.3.4.1 shows three different examples of age questions.
Figure 1.3.4.1: Three examples of age demographic questions.
Sex Assigned at Birth: This question should be asked if it is essential to address the research question and if you are looking at differences between males and females. You may include a third option of “I prefer not to answer.”
Ethnicity and Race: These questions can be critical for tracking health, academic, and other disparities between populations. Figure 1.3.4.2 is a good example of this type of question.
Figure 1.3.4.2: Race Question Example
Current Country of Residence: Because this course is taught to students around the world, it may be helpful to ask participants their current country of residence (United States, Canada, Ghana, Nigeria, Colombia, and so on).
Socioeconomic Status: This is a helpful question when your participants are all from the same country. However, since SES differs by country, it may be difficult to formulate the answer. Figure 1.3.4.3 is a good example of how to ask this question.
Figure 1.3.4.3
Other Demographic Questions: Some other questions that could be pertinent to your survey are employment status, number of children, education status, disability, citizenship, income, language, relationship status, or religious affiliation.
Discovery, or background research, happens again when you are ready to focus on your research question and begin your own literature review. There are two crucial elements to discovering the literature for your review with the least amount of stress as possible: The places you look and the words you use in your search.
The places you look depend on:
The words you use will help you locate existing literature on your topic, as well as topics that may be closely related to yours. There are two categories for these words:
The words you use during both the initial and next stage of discovery should be recorded in some way throughout the literature search process. Additional terms will come to light as you read and as your question becomes more specific.
The McKay Library at BYUI provides many tools to assist with research.
A search tool is provided for you to use in this course. Follow these steps to use the tool.
To read the article click on Access options and choose Full Text, PDF or Online Full Text to read the article.
(Brigham Young University-Idaho, n.d.)
PubMed is a database that consists of over 36 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. To access PubMed, you need to first access the McKay Library search tool.
To search PubMed follow these steps:
The results of your search will be shown. You can further narrow down your search by using the filters on the left hand side of the page. For example, you can limit your search to the last 10 years of research by using the slider bar to move the years. You can also select the box that reads “Free full text” in order to only show articles that you will be able to download for free.
The figure below shows a sample search that has been limited to the years 1994-2023 and is free full text articles.
When you click on the article, you will be able to download the full text if available, and also save that article to your Zotero database (see Chapter 2).
NOTE: All content is licensed CC-BY-NC unless otherwise noted. This courseware includes resources from multiple individuals and organizations. See the “References” section at the bottom of each page for copyright and licensing information specific to the material on that page. If you believe that this courseware violates your copyright, please contact us.
References
Frederiksen, L. (2020). Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing Graduate Students. Rebus Community. https://press.rebus.community/literaturereviewsedunursing/front-matter/introduction/
License: CC-BY