In this analysis, the two articles utilized includes “Using a theory of planned behaviour framework to explore hand hygiene beliefs at the ‘5 critical moments’ among Australian hospital-based nurses” and “The Impact of Workload on Hygiene Compliance in Nursing.” The later article utilizes the qualitative research design while the former article utilizes the quantitative research design. The credibility of the information derived from the quantitative research article is strengthened by the researchers’ pre-understanding that provides their personal and professional perspectives on the research problem (Pittet, 2001). On the other hand, the qualitative research article fails to provide an insight of the researchers’ professional and personal perspective on the research problem. The quantitative research quantifies the research problem by generating the numerical data of six trial phases, which are statistically interpolated by tables and graphs. Contrary, the qualitative article provides a description of the data and provide in-depth analysis of how the workload is one of the factors that have a negative relationship with the compliance to hand hygiene (White et al. 2015). While the quantitative article utilizes structured techniques such as narrative interviews to determine the compliance to hand hygiene, the qualitative study utilizes methodically flexible techniques such as group discussion. The two articles provide recommendations for the research problem. For instance, the quantitative research suggests that concentration of the nursing skills and relief from the subjectively perceived stress could motivate good hygiene practices. On the other hand, the qualitative research recommends that individual strategies should be incorporated to tackle hand hygiene among nurses.
There are several advantages and disadvantages that can be derived from the two different approaches utilized in the two articles. The advantages of the article that utilized the quantitative research design is that the approach allowed the researcher to gather information from relatively more participants. For instance, the study have gathered data from ten hospital departments from June 2007 to May 2008. On the other hand, the qualitative research approach limited the number of the participants to 5 wards across three hospitals in Queensland, Australia. Another advantage of the quantitative research approach includes providing numerical informational that is transformed into statistical information, which is interpreted by tables and graphs (Pittet, 2001). However, the limitation of the quantitative research is that it requires the use of large sample of respondents to increase the statistical accuracy of the result. Therefore, the study becomes relatively more expensive to conduct. In addition, it is challenging to interpret the data without the use of the control group.
The advantage of the qualitative research approach is that it provides rich data and comprehensive written information by determining the social meaning and how the problem affects the individuals. The study have analyzed the behavioral behavior, normative beliefs and control beliefs to ensure the easier description of the result. In addition, the research allowed the researcher to use unstructured techniques such as open-ended questionnaires. However, despite the use of the unstructured techniques, the TPB belief framework predetermined the topics hence limiting the scope of the study. In addition, the focus group discussion utilized did not prompt underlying beliefs within the area of study. In additional, the researchers could not generalize to the overall population of the study.
I would support the claim that the qualitative research is relatively not scientific compared to quantitative approach because of several reasons. First, the qualitative research does not show the reliability of the researchers’ pre-understandings that relate to personal and professional insights on the research problem. Secondly, the presence of the quantified information in the identified qualitative article indicates that data cannot be falsified without the presence of statistical and quantitative approach. In this case, the quantitative study is more scientific than qualitative study because it can be falsified, and it is precise. Thirdly, the qualitative approach lacks a set of hypothesis, hence making the study imprecise. However, the qualitative research approach is more parsimonious because they interpret their results to their most fundamental form to describe the cause of the behaviors.
References
Knoll, M., Lautenschlaeger, C., & Borneff-Lipp, M. (2010). The impact of workload on hygiene compliance in nursing. British Jsournal of Nursing, 19(16), S18-S22
White, K. M., Jimmieson, N. L., Obst, P. L., Graves, N., Barnett, A., Cockshaw, W., & Paterson, D. (2015). Using a theory of planned behaviour framework to explore hand hygiene beliefs at the ‘5 critical moments’ among Australian hospital-based nurses. BMC health services research, 15(1), 59.
