Snowballing Paper

Population/sample

Sir Charles Gardiner is chosen as an appropriate location for the research due to its commitment as a teaching hospital in advancing medical research and technology. Also, it is a busy, metropolitan hospital with an ED that sees approximately 60,000 cases per annum (Geelhoed, & de Klerk, 2012). Anecdotally from interactions and observations, this hospital experiences high levels of alcohol and drug abuse presentations, hence, there is high likelihood for the nurses to have experienced episodes of workplace violence. The email addresses of ED nurses can be attained from staff development nurse once ethical approval from the ethics board of Sir Charles Gardiner and University of Western Australia are attained. The email will outline participation request from the individual nurse as well brief synopsis of the research. A consent letter will be distributed online via e-mail so that those who receive it can forward them to casual or temporary ED nurses at the said hospital via the process of snowballing. Snowballing is the technique of utilising current participants to attract more participants to the study (Creswell, 2009).

The target group was ED nurses employed at Sir Charles Gardiner hospital at time of data collection. The inclusion criteria was that the nurses had to
Correlational analysis involves the 2-dimensional angle of the extent of correlation between the elements. This tool of analysis ascertains the interconnectedness of the elements in study and if there is, determines the extent of the link (Field, 2009). Pearson’s correlations and linear regressions are utilised to determine the interconnectedness amongst the elements. The collated data are separated by each element and linear regression analysis is undertaken to ascertain the extent of interconnectedness (Christensen,