Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

A DNP prepared nurse must be able to find and examine evidence to produce practice changes that improve patient outcomes. Understanding how to generate and interpret evidence requires understanding of research methodology and data analysis (Etchegaray & Fischer, 2009). Descriptive statistics are used to describe, summarize, and combine quantitative data for analysis. There are many strategies a DNP prepared nurse can use to effectively analyze data. When comparing the four levels of measurement it is important to keep in mind that the hierarchy starts with the nominal level which is lower and has the ratio scales at the top. Moving from a higher to a lower level of measurement results in loss of data (Polit & Beck, 2016). In descriptive statistics data can be described in terms of three characteristics: the shape of the distribution of values, central tendency, and variability. Correctly organizing numeric data include placing numbers in frequency distributions which involve arrangement of values from lowest to highest, together with a count of the number of times each value was obtained. Frequency data can be displayed with graphs and polygons. The shape of the distributions can be symmetrical but with real data sets, distributions are rarely perfectly symmetric (Polit and Beck, 2016). Minor discrepancies are overlooked in characterizing a distribution’s shape.

The measures for central tendency are: the mode, the median, and the mean. They are good indicators of data organization and of clarification of data patterns. The mode is the most frequently occurring value in a distribution, the median is the point in a distribution above which and below which 50% of cases fall, and the mean is the sum of all scores, divided by the number of scores (Polit & Beck, 2016). The central tendency must be correctly calculated for data analysis. Only when a distribution of scores is symmetric and unimodal, the three indexes of central tendency coincide, while in skewed distributions, the values of the mode, median, and mean differ (Polit & Beck, 2016). According to Polit and Beck (2016), generally, the mode is best used for nominal measures, the mode or median is appropriate for ordinal measures, and the mean is best suited for interval and ratio measures.

Variability reflects how spread out or dispersed the data are. Variability expresses the extent to which scores in a distribution differ from one another (Polit & Beck, 2016). The range and standard deviation are measures of variability.

Descriptive statistics do not answer research questions but they are used to summarize characteristics of data sample and document methodologic qualities. They help the researcher evaluate data in an unbiased and objective manner.

                                                            References

Etchegaray, J. M., & Fischer, W. G. (2009). Understanding evidence-based research methods:

        Descriptive statistics. Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 3(1), 111-117.

Polit, D. F. & Beck, C. T. (2016). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for

    nursing practice (10th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.