Identifying and Interpreting Descriptive Statistics
For my discussion, I chose the statistical item race. In a study population of 1750 participants, 3% were Hispanic, 0.5% Alaska Natives, 2.5% Asian, 15.8% African-American, 0.2% other Pacific Islanders, 69.1% whites, and 8.6% of unknown ethnicity. This result, which was collected by asking respondents what race or ethnic group they come from, can be interpreted in several ways. These findings are useful in defining certain conclusions about the research giving it more concrete meaning.
The results tell which ethnic groups participated in the study. The researcher can say that more whites (69.1%) participated in the survey than any other ethnic community did. Besides, Pacific Islanders (0.2%) least involved in the study. This information can be used to confirm the research hypothesis about race nurses of the population. Another inference from the descriptive is the geographical location of the study; one can conclude that the study was conducted in a white country. The data exhibit perfect congruence with the research hypothesis; hence, hypothetical data (Smith & Glass, 1977). Hypothetical data is information about a phenomenon that is assumed to exist or to be true.
This analysis proves the strength of the evidence because it uses the highest level of clinical practice method of research; meta-analysis (O’rourke, 2007). Such an analysis allows for the aggregation of findings from different sources to come up with various evidence-based practices in nursing(Smith & Glass, 1977). The idea is to combine data from different sources, or quantitative studies to a single large volume then suggest a way forward that affects all the research findings.
References
O’rourke, K. (2007). A historical perspective on meta-analysis: Dealing quantitatively with varying study results. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076807100012020
Smith, M. L., & Glass, G. V. (1977). Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.32.9.752