Essential Statistics for Nursing Essay
Essential Statistics for Nursing Essay
Nursing practice relies must take up and use evidence from credible research whenever possible to gain acceptance and recognition. In fact, the adoption of evidence-based nursing practices demand that nurses be knowledgeable about the assessment and application of applicable and credible evidence. Unfortunately, financial and time constraints diminish research standards so that credibility of evidence comes into question. Understanding the concepts of reliability and validity help in addressing this concern. In this case, reliability refers to the consistency of the research in measuring what is intended. This requires that the research tool (such as interview or questionnaire) produce similar results under consistent conditions thus showing that there was no measurement error and the reported score are not resultant of randomly occurring factors such as current events or seasonality. Essential Statistics for Nursing Essay
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Reliability is improved by standardizing the research tool and ensuring that all measurements are conducted in a similar manner among all participants even as they are made to understand what is being measured, and data collectors are trained on measurement strategy. On the other hand, validity refers to the merit of the study in terms of the degree to which the research tool actually measures what it is supposed to measure. A research must meet two conditions for it to be valid. The first condition is that it must be internally valid by ruling out alternative explanations for the results. The second condition is that it must be externally valid through presenting generalizable findings that can be applied to the whole population (Rowe, 2015). In this respect, a reliable and valid research is one whose design provides consistent and accurate results that act as credible evidence.
Reference
Rowe, P. (2015). Essential statistics for the pharmaceutical sciences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Essential Statistics for Nursing Essay