Deck 1: Introduction to Nursing Research in an Evidence-Based Practice Environment

Question 1

What is the highest priority for the importance of research in the nursing profession?

A) Research findings provide evidence for informing nurses' decisions and actions.
B) Conduct research to better understand the context of nursing practice.
C) Document the role that nurses serve in society.
D) Establish nursing research areas of study.

Answer 1

Research findings provide evidence for informing nurses' decisions and actions.

Question 2

Which group would be best served by clinical nursing research?

A) Nursing administrators
B) Practicing nurses
C) Nurses' clients
D) Healthcare policymakers

Answer 2

Nurses' clients

Question 3

In the United States, in what area does research play an important role in nursing?

A) Chronic illness
B) Credentialing and status
C) Nurses' personalities
D) Nurses' education

Answer 3

Credentialing and status

Question 4

What is the role of a consumer of nursing research?

A) Read research reports for relevant findings.
B) Participate in generating evidence by doing research.
C) Participate in journal club in a practice setting.
D) Solve clinical problems and make clinical decisions.

Question 5

Which topic most closely conforms to the priorities that have been suggested for future nursing research?

A) Attitudes of nursing students toward smoking.
B) Promotion of excellence in nursing science.
C) Nursing staff morale and turnover.
D) Number of doctorate prepared nurses invarious clinical specialties.

Question 6

What is the process of deductive reasoning?

A) Verifying assumptions that are part of our heritage.
B) Developing specific predictions from general principles.
C) Empirically testing observations that are made known through our senses.
D) Forming generalizations from specific observations.

Question 7

What is the ontological assumption of those espousing a naturalistic paradigm?

A) Objective reality and those natural phenomena are regular and orderly.
B) Phenomena are not haphazard and result from prior causes.
C) Reality is multiply constructed and multiply interpreted by humans.
D) Reality is not fixed, but is rather a construction of human minds.

Question 8

What is the epistemological assumption of those espousing a positivist paradigm?

A) The researcher is objective and independent of those being studied.
B) Phenomena are not haphazard, but rather have antecedent causes.
C) The researcher instructs those being studied to be objective in providing information.
D) Reality is not fixed, but is rather a construction of human minds.

Question 9

Which is not a characteristic of traditional scientific method?

A) Control over external factors.
B) Systematic measurement and observation of natural phenomena.
C) Deductive reasoning.
D) Emphasis on a holistic view of a phenomenon, studied in a rich context.

Question 10

What is empiricism?

A) Making generalizations from specific observations.
B) Deducing specific predictions from generalizations.
C) Gathering evidence rooted in reality.
D) Verifying the assumptions on which the study was based.

Question 11

What is a hallmark of the scientific method?

A) Infallible
B) Holistic
C) Systematic
D) Flexible

Question 12

Which of the following limits the power of the scientific method to answer questions about human life?

A) The necessity of departing from traditional beliefs.
B) The difficulty of accurately measuring complex human traits.
C) The inability to control potential biases.
D) The shortage of theories about human behavior.

Question 13

What is a criticism of the scientific method?

A) Deductive
B) Deterministic
C) Empirical
D) Reductionist

Question 14

What is involved in naturalistic qualitative research?

A) Involves deductive processes
B) Takes places in the field.
C) Focuses on the idiosyncrasies of those being studied.
D) Attempts to control the research context to better understand the phenomenon being studied.

Question 15

A researcher wants to investigate the effect of patients' body position on blood pressure. This is an example of what type of study?

A) Qualitative
B) Constructivist inquiry
C) Quantitative
D) Researcher preference of either quantitative or qualitative

Question 16

A researcher is studying the effect of massage on the alleviation of pain in cancer patients. This is an example of what type of study?

A) Descriptive
B) Exploratory
C) Applied
D) Basic

Question 17

A researcher wants to study the process by which people make decisions about seeking treatment for infertility. What is the researcher's paradigmatic orientation?

A) Positivism
B) Determinism
C) Empiricism
D) Naturalism

Question 18

What is the continuum of participation on research?

A) Academics to practitioners
B) Consumers to producers
C) Journalists to educators
D) Mentors to novice nurses

Question 19

What is the goal of explanatory research?

A) Understand the underpinnings of natural phenomena and to explain systematic relationships among them.
B) Begins with the phenomenon of interest,but rather than simply observing and describing it, exploratory research investigates the full nature of the phenomenon, the manner in which it is manifested, and the other factors to which it is related.
C) Study phenomena about which little is known.
D) Make predictions and to control phenomena based on research findings.