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Response to Bobbie on Topic 3 DQ 2 Your response to Topic 3 DQ 2 is on point. Reading through it I find that you accurately determined the two methods that are used in nursing research and practice to evaluate evidence. When we talk of evidence, these are of course the peer-reviewed scholarly articles or research that are unveiled by clinical inquiry to enrich evidence-based practice. As you observe in your post, the two methods are quantitative and qualitative approaches. I am in agreement with you that the quantitative approach makes use of numbers and figures in terms of particular statistical metrics such as means, deviations, and ratios. It also makes use of inferential statistical tools such as Chi-square, analysis of variance (ANOVA), regression analysis, correlation studies, and t-tests amongst others (Rayo & Macrolides, 2013; Maltby et al., 2007). It is much easier to determine whether quantitative evaluation of evidence is valid and reliable because of this statistical approach. For this reason, findings of quantitative evaluation are easily generalizable to the entire population represented by the sample studied. Qualitative evaluation of evidence on the other hand does not rely on numbers or numerical manipulation of data, just as you have pointed out. In essence, it is non-statistical in nature. What this means is that it does not use the same statistical tools used by the quantitative evaluation technique and mentioned above. Qualitative evaluation of evidence concentrates on observations of the behavior of subjects and looks for broad themes that then provide insight into the characteristics of the study subjects and by extension the entire population. I however disagree with you that it is easier to use the quantitative method than the qualitative method. My opinion is that it is actually the other way round. Qualitative studies are easy to formulate and data collection instruments are not complicated. Usually, qualitative data is collected using questionnaires, interviews, and observations. There is no technical manipulation of data or calculations to be done. The only downside is that because of the non-statistical nature of qualitative studies, the sample size needs to be large. References Maltby, J., Day, L., & Williams, G. (2007). Introduction to statistics for nurses. Pearson Education Ltd. Rayo, T. & Macrolides, G.A. (2013). Basic statistics: An introduction with R. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Name two different methods for evaluating evidence. Compare and contrast these two methods. BOBBIES ANSWER Re: Topic 3 DQ 2 Quantitative research and qualitative research is two very popular ways to evaluate evidence in the scientific and medical fields. Quantitative research uses numbers and statistics to evaluate evidence while qualitative uses mainly words and meanings such as surveys, open-ended questions, thoughts and experiences. While qualitative research is the least one used out of the two it seems to becoming more popular. It is for sure the hardest data to organize and takes much dedication and organizational skills to sort and store. Normally qualitative research is used in case-based studies to gather evidence. Quantitative research is easier to gather due to the fact that you are normally looking at values. Values can be more simple to gather and sort and tend to be more dependable than surveys and questionnaires. Qualitative data can sometimes be changed to go in favor of one idea or the other based on the researchers goal. This can cause your evidence to be skewed. Some researchers use a mixed methods approach and use both quantitative and qualitative data.