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Research Reliability

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Research Reliability Essay
Applied Nursing Research

Research Reliability Essay When conducting a research report, the researcher must provide quality and trustworthy data that is objective, precise, accurate, reliable, and valid (Norwood, 2010). These traits are important when conducting a qualitative or a quantitative research study. Despite researcher’s eagerness to prove the validity and reliability of research data, there are situations that interfere with the accuracy of the study producing measurement errors, such as contaminants and biases. The first study I chose is a qualitative study by researchers Shaw, Robertson, Pransky, and McClellan (2003). The purpose of the study was to analyze the employee’s perspective on the roles of supervisors to prevent workplace disability after injuries. As part of needs assessment for a supervisory training program, 30 employees from four companies were interviewed about the role of supervisors to prevent workplace disability after injuries. From interview notes, 305 employee statements were extracted for analysis. An affinity mapping process with an expert panel produced 11 common themes: accommodation, communicating with workers, responsiveness, concern for welfare, empathy/support, validation, fairness/respect, follow-up, shared decision-making, coordinating with medical providers, and obtaining coworker support of accommodation (Shaw, Robertson, Pransky, McClellan, 2003). In qualitative reports, the researcher needs to address the quality criteria of confirmability, dependability, and credibility of the study. The researcher shows confirmability by providing open- ended questioning and free discourse to reduce subject response bias and an expert panel process was used for the theme extraction to reduce experimenter biases in analysis of interview notes and conclusions (Shaw, Robertson, Pransky, McClellan,

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