Research Process: a general strategy for gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data to answer a question.
Research Strategy Schema
- Quantitative research: involves measurement of outcomes using numerical data under standardized conditions.
- may be used all along the continuum of research
- may be obtained using formal instruments which address physical or physiological parameters or by putting subjective information into an objective numerical scale.
- Qualitative research: more concerned with a deep understanding of a phenomenon through narrative description – typically obtained under less structured conditions.
- generally applied to descriptive or exploratory research
- based on open-ended questions, interviews, and observations
Research classifications (based on objective of research):
- Basic research: done to obtain empirical data that can be used to develop, refine, or test theory.
- directed toward the acquisition of new knowledge
- typically done in laboratory – “bench research”
- Applied research: directed toward solving immediate practical problems and testing theories that direct practice
- usually carried out under actual practice conditions – “clinical research”
*Clinical research is often a hybrid of both basic and applied science.
Translational research: application of basic scientific findings to clinically relevant issues, and simultaneously, the generation of scientific questions based on clinical dilemmas.
- taking knowledge from “bench to bedside”
