evidence based practice

To achieve a high quality of healthcare and to keep up with the increasing pace of clinical advances in the field of midwifery, using women’s experiences and statistics within evidence based practice is probably the best research evidence. Evidence based practice is ‘The conscientious and judicious use of current best evidence in conjunction with clinical expertise and patient values to guide health (and social) care decisions’. (Sackett et al 2000). The main aims of this assignment are to outline what qualitative and quantitative data are, how they are used in evidence based practice and to outline the key differences between these two methods. Two research papers, on qualitative and one quantitative will also be compared with respect to the key methodological differences used within the papers.

Qualitative research looks to explore a particular subject or question more in depth and is often used to research into a topic where there is unknown information. This type of research is more useful when answers are needed to what, how and why and when in-depth questions need to be answered and they cannot be done numerically. The researcher is looking to develop an in-depth understanding of this topic. Qualitative research uses small sample groups and the methods of collecting the information are often open ended questions in the form of in-depth interviews and focus groups. The participants used have generally had exposure to the phenomenon in the particular study. Qualitative research is less numerically measurable and results are often exposed as themes or trends presented in a narrative. Qualitative research’s aim is subjective.

Quantitative research looks to measure data within a study. It is only used when this data can be collected numerically. The sample size with this research is large and the researcher has no involvement with the participant making the research objective. Quantitative research uses structured closed question design and the results are