Information Needed
To address the problem of bike safety, one will have to consider the statistical data related to bike-riding incidents occurring in the designated area over the past few years (Sterle, House, & Sterle, 2015). To be more exact, it is required to know the percentage of children wearing helmets and those complying with the corresponding rules will have to be incorporated into the set of data necessary for the research. Moreover, the severity of the traumas received as a result of the incidents above will have to be located (Bergenstal, Davis, Sikora, Paulson, & Whiteman, 2015). Consequently, the correlation between compliance with the existing safety rule and the threats that children riding bikes are exposed to can be drawn.
Priority Issues
- Health. Health remains the issue of the top priority as the study is aimed at reducing the number of accidents and, therefore, bringing the rates of mortality and injuries among children down. While riding the environment from the threats to children’s well-being, such as the dangers of sustaining an injury during a bike ride, is barely possible, it is crucial to reinforce the safety measures and define the approaches to enhancing the existing precaution measures.
- Safety. Another essential concept that the study under analysis is going to address, the issue of safety needs to be discussed. In the specified case, safety is related directly to the target audience’s health as the study is aimed at identifying the connection between the given variables.
Research Purposes Analysis
As a rule, descriptive studies are aimed at exploring a specific phenomenon and defining its typical features. Explanatory research, in its turn, is focused on locating the factors that cause a certain phenomenon to occur or defining the links between certain variables. As the name of the study type suggests, it seeks to explain certain ideas, concepts, theories, etc. as opposed to merely describing them. A predictive analysis implies that a forecast concerning a particular topic should be made in the course of the study (McKenna, 2006). Therefore, in contrast to the descriptive and the explanatory types of research, which concern primarily the events or phenomena that can be observed at present, a predictive study addresses the issues that are likely to occur in the future. Last but definitely not least, prescriptive study deserves close attention as a specimen of research. A prescriptive analysis can be defined as a process-intensive one (Beck, 2013) and requires an overview and a detailed analysis of the existing opportunities for the decision-making process. Although each type of research has its pros and cons, in the specified setting, the adoption of the prescriptive strategy needs to be viewed as an option, since the research is aimed at defining the strategy for enhancing safety rates among children riding bikes in the future.
Types of Research and Its Purposes
The choice of the research design as far as the process of data gathering is concerned (i.e., the decision to carry out an experimental, quasi-experimental, or non-experimental research) is linked directly to its purposes. Going into details, one should address the issue of control over the variables or the lack thereof. In the scenario that implies numerous possibilities of executing control over the study variables, the choice of an experimental design seems the most adequate approach as the researcher is capable of altering the variables and, therefore, carrying out experiments. In the environment, where the author of the study is forced to observe as opposed to influencing the variables directly, a non-experimental method is chosen while the quasi-experimental approach is somewhere in-between. Therefore, a descriptive paper, which does not require affecting the variables in any way, will incorporate a non-experimental approach, while an explanatory one will need a quasi-experimental strategy at the very least.
Descriptive Aspects of Qualitative and Quantitative Studies
The idea of introducing descriptions into research is typically associated with quantitative studies, which do not need the further quantification of results. However, numerous authors claim that descriptive elements are also crucial for a quantitative study. Moreover, when carrying out a quantitative study, one must choose between employing descriptive and experimental designs (Clifford & Gough, 2014). The necessity to make the above choice is predetermined by the fact that the associations between the variables under analysis have to be evaluated in the course of the research. For instance, a qualitative descriptive study may aim at locating the factors that may impede the process of safety promotion whereas a quantitative descriptive paper will incorporate an evaluation of the severity of the above factors.
Answers to Explanatory, Predictive, or Prescriptive Questions: Qualitative Research
Although quantitative studies typically imply a statistical analysis of the existing data, they can also be used to answer explanatory, predictive, and prescriptive questions. For instance, a quantitative study may be aimed at detecting the veracity of the outcomes of a previous one (i.e., being a follow-up study), improving the current theories concerning a specific issue or phenomenon, etc. Although the tasks above are completed with the help of statistical analysis or other forms of a quantitative approach, they deal with explanatory, predictive, or prescriptive issues. Consequently, it is safe to say that a quantitative study can answer the questions of the specified type (Hackett, 2015).
Locating the Database
When considering the research in question, i.e., the study of the connection between accidents occurring to children riding bikes and the reinforcement of safety and security rules, one must give credit to the existing nursing-related databases. First and most obvious, Medline, PubMed, and similar databases need to be mentioned as the source of information concerning the traumas that children may suffer when getting into an accident. It is crucial to consider the databases such as ProQuest and ResearchGate seeing that the specified article storages have a variety of studies addressing injuries caused by accidents and the tools that allow enhancing patients’ safety (Patient safety: Databases, 2016).
However, apart from the health concern, the issue related to the actual safety rules and regulations has to be addressed. At this point, the databases incorporating information on legal issues, rules, and regulations can be advised. For these purposes, the standard research databases such as the above ProQuest, ResearchGate, EBSCOhost, etc., can be suggested as the resources where essential data on the subject matter can be found. Finally, the existing regulations can be found at the sites with a.gov domain, i.e., the government information sources that can be deemed as both credible and essential to the study (Lawrence, 2007).
PICOT-Based Research Questions
Scenario A
Will the provision of the educational strategies help reduce the number of road-accident-related traumas among children within a year by 30%?
Scenario B
Will the integration of family members into the process of teaching children the basics of safety rules when riding a bike help bring the rates of rodent threat by 50% by the end of the year?
Scenario C
Will the provision of online information regarding the threat of rodents help prevent the instances of children riding bikes from being attacked by rodents by 15% by the next month?
Reference List
Beck, C. T. (2013). Routledge international handbook of qualitative nursing research. New York City, NY: Routledge.
Bergenstal, J., Davis, S. M., Sikora, R., Paulson, D., & Whiteman, C. (2015). pediatric bicycle injury prevention and the effect of helmet use: The West Virginia experience. West Virginia Medical Journal, 108(3), 78-81.
Clifford, C., & Gough, S. (2014). Routledge international handbook of qualitative nursing Research. New York City, NY: Routledge.
Hackett, P. (2015). Qualitative research methods in consumer psychology: Ethnography and culture. New York City, NY: Psychology Press.
Lawrence, D. W. (2007). Using online databases to find peer-reviewed journal articles on injury prevention and safety promotion research: a study of textword queries by SafetyLit users. Injury Prevention, 13(1), 232–236.
McKenna, H. (2006). Nursing theories and models. New York City, NY: Routledge.
Patient safety: Databases. (2016).
Sterle, G., House, N., & Sterle, G. (2015). An inquiry into aspects of road safety in Australia. Web.