WEEK 4 NCMB 311 LECTURE

LINKS USED:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622004208?via%3Dihub.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1976131715000316

In research, we always start with a general idea, and

then we move forward, to specific details. The
following parts of your manuscript, are your topic,
research problem, purpose statement, and
research question. These are different parts of your
manuscript, they are different, but they are
connected.

● Reflects the issue – found in the literature-

concerning a health-related phenomenon.
● Examples:
- Carrer-related trajectories concerning
migration
- Understand the QoL of middle-aged
adults

A topic (general) reflects a broad, concern or issue

about certain health-related phenomenon (since we're
doing nursing research). The issue concerning a
health-related phenomenon should be found or should be based on the documented findings in the
literature. Aside from basing your issue or your topic on what you can observe, in the real world, your topic
must also be supported by existing literature.

Concepts that are found in the body of knowledge. We're not yet talking about actual concrete scenarios,
but rather we're talking about, abstract ideas. For example: the article by Ortega et, 2022. In that article, the
topic is about the career-related trajectories concerning migration. It operates at the level of abstraction
(general/ abstract).

The second article: It's about the quality of life of middle-aged adults; a study on body image, sexual quality
of life, depression, and quality of life in middle-aged adults. In this study, they want to understand, the
quality of life of middle age adults. These examples of topics are both abstract and in nature because they
talk about general ideas rather than specific or concrete situations or scenarios. We started with general
ideas, your topic. After your topic, is your research problem.
Research problems are also or also operate at the gen at the level of general ideas.

● Also called STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM (SOP)

● Usually identified after a literature review
- Research gap -> research problem
● Offers argument explaining the need for a study
● WHAT WILL BE STUDIED

Your research problem is the articulation of your research gap and since it is from the literature, it mainly
focuses on abstractions, and general ideas rather than specific or concrete situations. The main
characteristic of a research problem is that it talks about or asks about general ideas. The question we're
asking here is conceptual.

So for this article, this is the problem statement or the research gap. As you can see, this is the problem
statement. (It's in the 3rd paragraph.) Those nurses who decided to work in COVID nineteen hospitals,
during the pandemic and as a result of the deployment ban. And then the second group of nurses are the
nurses who did not comply with the request of the government and instead decided to stay at home and
take non-nursing jobs. So these are the 2 groups of nurses we're talking about here. So the emergence of
these two groups raises questions that underlie a broader problem of declining human resources.

1st, the pandemic's massive stall on health institutions, worsened labor shortages worldwide, emphasizing
the need to examine how health workers choose to commit to their work despite increasing risks. Second,
the Philippines deploys health professionals who above and beyond are call of duty. So this is the actual
articulation of the problem statement.

As part of the entire paragraph, how do some health workers decide to forego professional
obligations despite external pressures to remain on the job? (Interrogative statement; the question
operates at the conceptual level because the research problem is from the literature. If a certain statement
or idea is taken from the literature, we can say that it is something that operates at the general or,
conceptual level)

For the study of Kim and Tang, the research problem is stated as a declarative statement. While research
on middle age adults has been conducted for middle age women thus far, neither studies on men nor
women in middle age are sufficient. Most studies have mainly examined if they have any relations with
various physical and psycho-social factors centering on experimental studies that can improve quality of life
and concepts concerned with calculated quality of life through a variety of program interventions. Therefore,
for those in middle age who experience climacteric symptoms and aging and are adapting to physical
changes, it is difficult to class grasp how much their body image or sexual quality of life affects their quality
of life.

So, the authors are trying to say that although there have been already a lot of studies conducted about,
middle-aged adults and their quality of life, there's still a need to study, how the concepts of quality image
and or sexual quality of life can have an impact or can have an effect, in the general quality of life of these
middle-age adults. The research problem is tied, to the research gap. They presented what's unknown and
what needs to be studied further on the available evidence that we have, and then they went on to state the
problem statement. We're not just simply asking questions, but we should present, some background
information about how we arrived at a problem statement or research problem.

A problem statement is also part of your introduction section, which is the issue or the research gap that
you should have written as part of your manuscript. In your research gap, you've presented the latest
evidence about your topic. And then what are the possible areas of this topic. And then you will add the
statement or a question that directly asks this area of research that needs further study.

Purpose Statement summarizes the overall goal of the study. This overall goal is related to answering the
research problem.

● The purpose statement reflects the general methodology – QUAN or QUAL

● In writing your purpose statement, it is very important to be mindful about some conventions on
writing, quantitative purpose statement and qualitative purpose statement.

Quantitative

● Identifies the key study variables, their possible interrelationships, and the population of interest.
● Example
- The study of King Kim and Kang 2015. The purpose of this study was to examine the
correlations of body image, sexual quality of life (SQOL), depression, and quality of life, and to
identify the influencing factors on quality of life of middle aged adults in the community.
- The key study variables: body image, sexual quality of life, depression, and quality of life.
- The population of in interest: middle aged adults.
● Verbs that communicate the nature of inquiry
- To test or evaluate something (e.g., an intervention) suggest an experimental design
o To evaluate whether an intervention is effective or not in changing the dependent
variable
- To examine or explore the relationship between two variables is more likely to involve a
non-experimental design
 o Our goal is not to test any prevention, but to understand the relationship of variables by
examining how they link with each other or how they connect with each other.
- Ambiguous = “compare”

Qualitative
● Indicates the nature of the inquiry, the key concept or phenomenon, and the group,
community, or setting under study.
● Verbs the communicate the nature of inquiry
- To explore, investigate, or describe- phenomenology or ethnography.
- To understand, discover, or generate- grounded theory
● “BUZZ WORDS”
- Grounded theory- processes, social structures, social interactions
- Phenomenology- experience, lived experience, meaning, essence
- Ethnography- culture, roles, lifeways, cultural behavior
● Example
- This paper uses the case of the Philippines’ nurse deployment ban to analyze how health
workers’ emigration trajectories impact their commitment to working for health institutions within
their home countries. (Ortega et al 2022)
o So as you can see, we did we did not see any buzzwords here, but the term and how the
idea of the purpose statement suggest, that Ortega et al is trying to understand how the
process of these nurses were able to decide on their immigration trajectories in relation
to the deployment plan they have experienced.
o We were able to identify also the population of interest (nurses) as well as the
phenomenon of purpose (during the deployment ban).

The purposes statement is, gradually becoming more specific, but still operates at the level of general ideas
because it is directly related to the research problem, which is very general, very abstract. So, basically, the
purpose statement summarizes the overall goal of the study. And the overall goal of the study is always to
address the research problem that you have identified.

The research problem is actually embedded in the introduction section, when you're discussing the
research gap and issue. The purpose statement can be added as part of your road map. So before stating
the road map, state first the purpose and then, provide an overview of the succeeding parts.

Research questions

● The specific queries researchers wanted to answer

- Based on the context of a target population where data will be collected
So we cannot answer directly the research problem because the question is conceptual. To be able to
answer this question, we need data. However, we cannot gather data if the question is too general, too
abstract. Therefore, we need to create questions that are specific, so that we can collect data. And once we
have collected data, we will use the findings from that data to answer now the research problem.

So the main difference between a research problem and a research question is that research question is a
specific question that are also related to the research problem because, ultimately, the goal of the research
question is to provide data or analysis that can be used to answer the research problem. The distinguishing
characteristic is that your research question is specific.

How can we crack a specific research question? Your research question must be based on a particular
context. In other words, you should have a target population in mind, and you should ask specific questions
about this particular target population. The question is no longer, deeply tied to the existing literature.
Rather, the question is based on the context of a target population, but it is still related to the research.

Research problem (generic/ abstract) Research questions (concrete/ specific)

Quantitative

● Often aligns with the research framework- a basis for identifying research variables

Variables: aspects of the phenomena that can be that can be measured and they can assume different
numerical values
● Independent variables: presumed cause
● Dependent (or outcome) variable: presumed effect
Example: smoking (independent) increases the risk of lung cancer (dependent).

To illustrate a
quantitative
research
question, it
would be
useful to align your
questions to your
research
framework
because your
research
framework will help
you identify variables which you will use, to examine the actual condition of your target population.
The discussion of Kim and Kam 2015, conceptually speaking, they understood that quality of life, can be
influenced by body image, sexual quality of life, and depression levels. And then, overall, the connections of
these different variables can be differentiated based on their general of middle age adults and the health
related characteristics of these middle aged adults.

This is a conceptual framework because the connections of the different concept or phenomenon are based
on how the researchers, how Kim and Kang, understood the connections of these variables.

Creating a schematic model to illustrate this conceptual framework. So if these are your frameworks, we
can consider these boxes and this circle as the variables. So what's useful about creating schematic model
for your conceptual or theoretical framework is that you can easily identify the variables of your study. This
schematic model also shows what are the variables that we need to study in this particular study. The
general and calculated characteristics, body image, sexual quality of life, depression, and quality of life.

Quantitative (cont.)

● Two types
- Descriptive Questions (a “what” question)
o Description of a single variable
- Inferential Questions (to check the connections between different study variables; examine)
o Comparative: “Significant difference”
o Correlational: “Significant association/ relationship”

In writing your quantitative research questions, it would be very helpful to align your questions with your
research framework. You must finalize first your research question before even writing the specific research
questions that are addressed to your potential target respondents.

(Go back to the framework) In writing your descriptive and inferential questions should be aimed to ask
about the single variable. Therefore, the question should only focus on one variable. So in this example, we
have 6 variables, and we should expect, okay, 6 descriptive questions for this particular framework.

DESCRIPTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What are the perceived general characteristics of middle-aged adults in terms of:
a. Gender d. Religion f. Living arrangement
b. Age e. Duration of g. Occupation
c. Education level marriage h. Monthly income.

2. What are the perceived health-related characteristics of middle-aged adults in terms of:
a. Disease c. Stress
b. Exercise d. Stressor
 e. Frequency of f. Presence of sleep g. Degree of deep
sexual Intercourse disorder sleep
with spouse

3. What is the perceived body image level of the respondents?

4. What is the perceived level of sexual quality of life of the respondents?
5. What is the respondents’ perceived quality of life?

INFERENTIAL QUESTIONS

1. Is there a significant difference between middle-aged adults' perceived general and health-related
characteristics and their perceived levels of body image, sexual QoL, depression, and QoL?
2. Is there a significant relationship between perceived levels of body image and QoL?
3. Is there a significant relationship between perceived sexual QoL levels and QoL?
4. Is there a significant relationship between perceived depression levels (Independent variable) and
QoL? (dependent variable)

Quantitative (cont.)

HYPOTHESIS (only for Quantitative research): These are declarative statements that claims or rejects the
presence, of connections between, different study variables (educated guess)

● Number of variables
- Simple: 1 Independent variable and 1 Dependent variable
- Complex: > 2 IV and > 2 DV
● Presence/ absence of a relationship
- Research: (+) relationship
- Null (Statistical hypothesis): (-) no relationship
● Direction of a relationship
- Directional: the hypothesis predicts the direction of a relationship
o Direct relationship: as the independent variable increases, the dependent variable will
also increase, and vice versa.
o Inverse relationship: if the independent variable decrease increases, then the
dependent variable will decrease and vice versa.
- Non-directional: it predicts the presence of a relationship, but it doesn't say anything about the
direction of the relationship between study variables.
● Transform the inferential questions into negative statements (Null hypothesis; this is the only
hypothesis that should be utilized)
● INFERENTIAL QUESTIONS
 - There is no significant difference between middle-aged adults' perceived general and
health-related characteristics and their perceived levels of body image, sexual QoL,
depression, and QoL
- There is no significant relationship between perceived levels of body image and QoL
- There is no significant relationship between perceived sexual QoL levels and QoL
- There is no significant relationship between perceived depression levels and QoL

Why are we using the null hypothesis? Why don't we just use, okay, Research hypothesis if our goal is
to establish that there is a connection between the study variables? The reason behind this is that all
statistical tests are based on the null hypothesis. The goal of the statistical results is that we will eventually
interpret a null hypothesis, not a research hypothesis. So, therefore, instead of requiring us to transform a
research hypothesis into a null hypothesis, why don't we just use a directly null hypothesis since this will be
our basis in interpreting our statistical results?

If you're doing quantitative research you must be able to finalize first your research framework which is
based on your literature review. Then try creating a schematic diagram for your research it will help you
pinpoint the key study variables that you need to use in your research. After identifying the key study
variables, you can use this schematic model to write your research questions (descriptive and inferential
questions). And then from your inferential question, the next thing that you need to do is to write your
hypothesis. (All parts of your manuscript are related to each other)

Qualitative

● A central question stipulates the phenomenon and population of interest.

- Grounded theory: process questions
- Phenomenology: meaning and experiences questions
- Ethnography: descriptive questions about culture
● Example
- How do aspiring nurse migrants form their career decisions in relation to the deployment ban
brought about by the pandemic (Ortiga et al., 2022)
o So as you may have noticed, the question focuses on process. How do they create their
career decisions?
o In qualitative research, we usually begin with a broad question, unlike in quantitative
research, because we want to gather as many stories as possible so that we can
accommodate all forms of experiences related to the phenomenon of focus.
● Qualitative research may evolve.
o Preview of one of the basic characteristics of qualitative research design, which is it evolves.
The research design evolves depending on the nature of the findings. That's why from
 broader research questions, there's a possibility that we will change our research question,
into a more specific question.

SUMMARY:

The research problem is general, and broad, while your research question is specific. And then we've also
discussed here, how to articulate quantitative and qualitative statements of the problem. The statement of
the problem should be added as part of your overview or road map in your introduction. You need to
articulate first the problem and the purpose statement and then you can proceed to discussing or
enumerating the road map or outline of the succeeding sections of your manuscript. So that means the
purpose statement is part of your introduction section. It's included as part of your outline.