Ambulatory Care Nurse Certification Practice Exam

Qualitative methods in nursing research focus on understanding experiences, emotions, perceptions, and meanings rather than quantifying data. Analyzing patient narratives about their education on diagnoses falls into this category because it involves collecting and interpreting subjective responses, exploring how patients perceive their educational experiences regarding their health challenges. Such narratives provide rich, detailed insights that help researchers gain a deeper understanding of patient perspectives, which is foundational in qualitative research.

In contrast, charting changes in blood pressure over time relies on numerical data and quantitative analysis, making it a quantitative method. Survey questions that ask patients to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10, while they do capture subjective feedback, also generate ordinal data that can be subjected to statistical analysis, thus leaning more towards quantitative methodology. Lastly, data on nursing hours per patient day over two years is purely quantitative and focuses on numerical analysis without capturing the quality of care or patient experiences.