Research design
Find a research journal article and identify, as closely as possible, the type of research design utilized. Then answer the following questions:
What is the research topic of the article?
What is the research hypothesis of the article?
What types of research design the author(s) used to test the hypothesis?
How did the author(s) collect the data? How are you thinking of the collecting data strategies of the article?
Sample Solution
The research topic of the article is: The Effects of Prescribing Opioids on Risk of Emergency Department Visits for Nonfatal Overdoses.
The research hypothesis of the article is: That patients prescribed opioids are at increased risk for nonfatal overdose requiring emergency department visits compared with those not prescribed opioids.
The type of research design utilized in this article is a retrospective cohort study which uses data from medical records to assess the association between opioid prescribing and risk of non-fatal overdose requiring an ED visit. The authors collected data from electronic medical records from 11 health systems across 8 states between January 2010 and December 2016, using claims data to identify people who had visited an ED after a non-fatal opioid overdose. They also used claims data to identify opioid prescription histories.
The authors collected the data through electronic medical records and claims data. They used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, such as analyzing trends over time, comparing groups that had different prescribing patterns, and interpreting individual patient cases.