Sample Characteristics-Nursing Research

• Review the table of sample characteristics.  Summarize the sample characteristics in one paragraph.
• Be succinct, include all of the characteristics.  Do not copy the table into your response.
• Address: Age, Gender, Education level, current income, hospital unit admitted to and length of stay in your paragraph.
• Common descriptive statistics to include are mean, median, range, percentages, and counts.
• If you were the reader of this research report, what other demographic data would you want to know about the subjects in the study?
• What are the APA guidelines for the abbreviation of statistics terms 

Students will post their initial replies before being able to see other students’ posts.

When conducting a research study, it is important to know about the sample.  Researcher’s will collect data on the sample’s characteristics such as gender, income, level of education, age, etc.  By knowing the sample’s characteristics, you can determine statistically if your sample is representative (very similar) to the population intended to be sampled in the study.  It answers the question, is my sample similar to the population?  This is important – because the researchers intentionally sample the target population by using specific sampling methods.  Researchers use descriptive statistics to do this:  mean, median, range, etc.  Nothing fancy.  Usually, this data is shown in Table Format (below).

In this discussion, you will see a table of sample characteristics and then summarize the characteristics in one paragraph — just like you see when reading research reports.  This is your turn to write a paragraph summing up a sample’s characteristics from a fictitious research study.

Study the following before writing your paragraph:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/descriptive_statistics.aspLinks to an external site. 

Here is a sample on how to write the Participants section of a research study:

Here is a sample  Participants section from an empirical (research) paper.

Sample  Participants section

http://korbedpsych.com/R07WriteSample.htmlLinks to an external site.  [Edited for length] All participants selected for this study resided in the middle-belt of Nigeria. Two samples were obtained. The first sample included 42 practicing teachers. These teachers attended a four-week in-service training workshop on general teaching skills that culminated in earning a certificate from a university. In this sample, 83% taught at government schools and 7% taught at private schools (10% did not respond). In terms of qualification, 41% earned a National Certificate of Education (the basic qualification for teaching at primary school), 27% completed a university bachelor’s degree, and 31% earned a postgraduate degree. The mean number of years taught was 10.6 years (SD=6.2 years). The second sample consisted of 171 pre-service teachers who were in their first year of teacher training at the university.  Of the pre-service teachers, 13% taught before attending university, with an average of 2.7 years of teaching experience (SD=3.80 years). The gender and age of the two samples are described in Table 1.

 

You are the researcher of a study and you are writing the sample characteristics section of a research report. Your study was conducted in an assisted living facility. Your data is shown below.

Sample Characteristics
Subject	Age	Gender	Education Level	Current Income	Assistance needed	Length of Stay in months
1	65	F	Hs grad	$24,000	Level 1	1
2	78	F	College grad	$12,000	Level 2	5
3	89	F	College grad	$12,000	Level 3	8
4	84	F	Less than HS	$15,600	Level 3	9
5	75	M	HS grad	$26,000	Level 1	12
6	72	M	HS grad	$19,500	Level 2	24
7	66	M	HS grad	$9,000	Level 2	12
8	89	F	HS grad	$10,800	Level 3	26
9	88	F	Less than HS	$10,100	Level 3	36
10	72	M	College grad	$8,500	Level 1	20
11	73	M	College grad	$9,000	Level 1	4
12	74	F	HS grad	$26,000	Level 1	8

Note: Column definitions

· Subject number is just a number given to each participant instead of using a name.

· Age is in years

· Gender is categorical – male or female

· Highest education level obtained

· Their current reported annual income.

· The level of care needed at the facility. Level 1 is the lowest level of care needed, level 3 is the highest level of care needed.

· Length of stay is the number of months the subjects have resided in the assisted living facility.

Approved Resources to Use in Writing Discussion Posts:

· The course textbook,

· any published peer-reviewed full-text article from the CINAHL database found in the ECPI Library ( https://ecpi.libguides.com/LibraryHomeLinks to an external site. ),

· .org, or .gov website with published credible information. 

· The use of AI is not permitted in this DQ.

· All sources must be published within the last 5 years.

· The initial DQ response must include the course textbook.

 

 

 For your initial post, complete the following:

· Review the table of sample characteristics.  Summarize the sample characteristics in one paragraph.

· Be succinct, include all of the characteristics.  Do not copy the table into your response.

· Address: Age, Gender, Education level, current income, hospital unit admitted to and length of stay in your paragraph.

· Common descriptive statistics to include are mean, median, range, percentages, and counts.

· If you were the reader of this research report, what other demographic data would you want to know about the subjects in the study?

· What are the APA guidelines for the abbreviation of statistics terms (Links to an external site.) ?  Demonstrate your understanding of these rules in your post.  Here’s a printable “Quick Guide” for you!   https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/numbers-statistics-guide.pdf (Links to an external site.)