Research Proposal Outline for Nursing Students

This research proposal outline provides clear details regarding the aim of the research proposal, background information, experimental design and methods for nursing students.

Running head: RESEARCH IN NURSING
Research in nursing
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1RESEARCH IN NURSING
Research proposal outline
Aim: This section will provide clear details regarding the aim of the research proposal. This will
be based on the PICO question and cover all the sections of the PICO framework. For example,
in case of the research topic ‘impact of extended nursing shift hours or long work hours
(overtime) on quality of patient care in emergency departments in Australia', the aim will to
investigate about the consequences of extended nursing work hours on quality of care for
emergency nurses workings in Australian clinical setting and recommends solutions to address
the issue associated with long working hours.
Background: The background section will focus on giving background information related to
the research topic to understand the rationale for research. This section will identify gaps in
existing research work and justify the reason behind conducting the research on a particular
topic. After review of the background information, the proposal will also provide direction
regarding how current research would help to fill research gap and promote practice
improvement (Blaikie & Priest, 2019). In case of the above topic, background information will
focus on the statistics related to extended work hours for nurse, association between nursing
work hours and negative patient outcome. Gaps in past work will also justify the research design
for the current research.
Experimental design and methods:
This section will mainly define the research design and research paradigm based on
which the research will be done. The selection of research design is first done based on the broad
category of qualitative and quantitative research. After selection of any of this research
methodology, the focus will be to identify specific qualitative or quantitative research

2RESEARCH IN NURSING
methodology that can support in getting answer to the research question. Qualitative research
will be based on interpretivist paradigm and quantitative research will be based on positivist
research philosophy. Positive ontology is mainly based on the assumption that world is external
and there is a objective reality behind any phenomenon (Antwi & Hamza, 2015). Hence, to seek
objectivity, real and logical quantitative data is used to uncover social trends and identify
relationship between research variables. If positivist philosophy is taken in the research proposal,
then it will prefer quantitative methods like structured questionnaire and official statistics to
interpret research data. In contrast, interpretevism is based on the assumption that different
people understand an event in different ways and there is need to evaluate individual views. In
such case qualitative research method is used (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2015).
Apart from discussion on research methodology and the research philosophy selected, the
methodology section of the proposal will also define the manner in which the research design
will be executed. All details related to the sampling technique, ethical approach to research and
the instrument or tools that will be used in the research will be defined. The data analysis method
and the manner in which the data will be presented will be examined. In addition, any possible
difficulties or limitations that can challenge interpretation of data will also be discussed. The
research proposal will conclude after providing a realistic and rational timeline or sequence of
steps to complete the investigation.

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References:
Antwi, S. K., & Hamza, K. (2015). Qualitative and quantitative research paradigms in business
research: A philosophical reflection. European Journal of Business and
Management, 7(3), 217-225.
Blaikie, N., & Priest, J. (2019). Designing social research: The logic of anticipation. John Wiley
& Sons.
Yanow, D., & Schwartz-Shea, P. (2015). Interpretation and method: Empirical research
methods and the interpretive turn. Routledge.