College of Nursing - Dissertation Guide

35 Chapter Four Results The results are just that. It is the statistical outcome of the data testing. The report will follow the outline established in chapter 3. Much of what the student will report will be in table form. The text, Presenting your findings: A practical guide for creating tables (Nicol & Pexman, 2010), is most helpful for how to construct tables. Begin by restating the purpose of the study. Indicate how many individuals were approached and accepted the invitation to participate. This is your return rate. Explain why individuals declined. Data Cleaning Explain how many of the forms were complete and useful for analysis. If forms were missing data, explain to what extent this occurred and how this was managed. Were there outliers? If so, what was the nature of the outliers and how did the student handle them? Descriptives Description of the Sample Here summarize the characteristics of the sample that the student obtained from the demographic portion of your instrument. Often this information is best presented in table form. Responses to the Measurements Report the basic measures of central tendency (mean, standard deviation) of the scores obtained on the instruments. Reliability Testing Provide information from the calculation of reliability. Compare the alpha the student obtain to those previously reported in other studies using the same instrument, if available. Construct a table that presents the item-total reliability and alpha if the item were to be deleted. If an item met the criteria for deletion the student established in chapter 3, indicate which item it is. Recalculate the descriptive for the instrument after deletion of poorly functioning items. Hypothesis Testing First report the values that have assured that the data meets the assumptions required for the statistical test that will be used for hypothesis testing. If the values do not support the assumptions, explain how the data was adjusted or how the student changed your statistical approach Restate each hypotheses and/or research question. Provide the statistical results and conclude by indicating whether or not the hypothesis was accepted or rejected . Chapter Summary