ESSAY: weighing the evidence

When conducting original research, the final step researchers must complete is weighing the evidence and interpreting the meanings of their data, statistics, and analyses. This is the culmination of the research process in which all of the research methods and designs can be synthesized into a meaningful conclusion. In this stage, researchers should formulate explanations for what their data indicates, determine whether the data answers their initial research question, identify areas of uncertainty, and consider directions for further research.

In this Discussion, you focus on one of the research articles that you identified for Part 2 of the Course Project (Literature Review). You then explore the process of how the researchers generated conclusions based on their data, consider other possible interpretations of their data, and formulate ideas for further research.

To prepare:

Review this week’s Learning Resources, focusing on how researchers find meaning in their data and generate sound conclusions. Pay particular attention to Table 2 in the article, “Study Design in Medical Research.”
Revisit the 5 articles that you identified in Part 2 of the Course Project. Select one to consider for the purpose of this Discussion.
Read sections of the chosen article where the data is presented, analyzed, and interpreted for meaning. What reasoning process did the researchers use to formulate their conclusions? What explanation did they give to support their conclusions? Were there any weaknesses in their analysis or conclusions?
Consider possible alternate conclusions that the researchers could have drawn based on their data.
Examine the findings that the article presents and consider how well they addressed the researcher’s initial question(s). What additional research could be done to build on these findings and gain a fuller understanding of the question?

ANSWER

The main purpose of a research is to either disapprove or prove the hypothesis. To do this, researchers collect data, analyze it and draw meaningful conclusions. In this case, scientists need to organize their data properly in order to enable them to easily understand the results. In fact, most research uses statistical-aided tools such as graphs, pie charts, and statistical computations such as mode, median and mean to analyze and make meaningful conclusions (Brown, 2014). Before making the conclusion, data analyzed is compared to the original hypothesis to identify if it was right. 

The article chosen for analysis, in this case, is that of Yealy et al. 2014 “A randomized trial of protocol-based care for early septic shock”.  The article includes a wide range of data from 31 emergency subdivisions in the United States. This includes 1351 patients out of 1341 which was selected using random sampling technique and placed in various groups of study. Reasoning techniques are greatly used in research to align the study findings with the given hypothesis. According to Brown (2014), reasoning refers to the process of using the existing knowledge to construct explanations, make predictions, and draw conclusions. A peculiar exploration of the data analysis section of the paper shows that deductive reasoning was used. In deductive reasoning, a conclusion is guaranteed. In this regard, the paper analyzes data guide by the intention-to-treat principle using protocol-based clinical care for early septic shock (Yealy et al., 2014). Actually, the paper starts by ascertaining the general rule and moves ahead to make specific conclusions. For instance, research analysis focused on testing the superiority of Protocol-based resuscitation to typical instances of health care and also if EGDT was better than protocol-based standard therapy (Yealy et al., 2014).  This is then narrowed to patient care in various treatments.  

According to analysis on the adherence to the protocol, it is revealed that for the duration of six hours of adherence to the protocol-based group was high. However, records show that out of patients in the EGDT and 3 out of 5 patients for the standard therapy could not be evaluated (Yealy et al. 2014).  The administration of central venous catheter failed due to technical challenges as seen among the ten patients,  no reason was offered for the case of four patients, the death of one patient, the need for emergency surgery for one patient,  and nine patients refused to be treated by the clinicians (Yealy et al. 2014). Thus, it is worth noting that early septic shock faces a number of risks where both nurses and patients do not adhere to given protocol as discussed above….