Question

You are a nurse administrator and want to study professional satisfaction and job satisfaction among nurses. The stated purpose of your study is, “to explore professional satisfaction and job satisfaction among practicing nurses and to identify contributing factor”. Select either a qualitative or quantitative approach and describe a sampling plan. Explain your inclusion and exclusion criteria. What might your sample size be?  

Answer 1

A Qualitative approach can be used in this study which is "to explore professional satisfaction and job satisfaction among nurses". This is because qualitative research is an inductive approach for discovering or expanding knowledge and it includes researcher's involvement in the identification of meaning or relevance of a particular phenomenon.

Sampling Plan : A sampling plan is a detailed outline of which measurements will be taken at what times,on which material,in what manner and by whom. The steps of sampling process include:

• Identifying and defining the target population - In this research the nurses are the target population.
• Describing the accessible population and ensuring sampling frame - Here the accessible population can be nurses working in five different wards like(OPD, surgical ward, OT, ICU and Pediatrics).
• Specify the sampling unit- The researcher must establish specific inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteia:

1. The nurses who are working in the evening shifts in these 5 wards
2. Nurses who are willing to participate in the study.
3. Nurses of any age group.

Exclusion criteria:

1. The nurses who do not work in the evening shift.
2. Nurses who are unwilling to participate.
3. Nurses who are overloaded with work in the ward.

• Specifying sample selection methods- Here Convenience sampling technique can be used which is a non-probability sampling technique where subjects are selected because of their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher.
• Determing sample size - The sample size in qualitative studies largely depends on the several purposes of the study, the quality of the informants, and the type of strategy used. The thumb rule to decide the sample size in the qualitative studies is based on data saturation, which is a point at which no new information is obtained and redundancy is reached.Data saturation depends on the number of factors or scope of research question. The sample size for this study can be generally 20-30 informants who can best contribute the information to develop a theory. (Grounded Theory)
• Specifying sampling plan: The researcher must have a final sampling plan so sampling process can be implemented without undue problems
• Selecting desired sample: Finally, the researcher draws a representative sample from the accessible population, which requires the implementation of the plan of the sampling process, and ultimately selects a representative part of the population, which is used by the researcher for data collection in research study.