background information, and evidence.

background information, and evidence.

Respond in one or more of the following ways:

Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, and evidence.

Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.

Offer and support an alternative perspective using readings from the classroom or from your own review of the literature in the Walden Library.

Make a suggestion based on additional evidence drawn from readings or after synthesizing multiple postings.

Main Post

When conducting research, it is necessary that the researcher not only know how to find the sources needed to answer the question that they have created but also how to analyze that information to understand which research design was used. Doing so will allow the researcher to provide the evidence needed to support or reject the question being asked. Quantitative research is the investigation of phenomena that lends themselves to precise measurement and quantification, often involving a controlled design (Polit & Beck, 2017). This discussion will look at two different quantitative studies and the qualities that make them so.

Sleep Apnea Study Number One

This study by Boulos et al.(2017) looks at the effectiveness of using home sleep apnea testing (HSAT) as a means of detecting obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) inpatients and outpatients. OSA can negatively impact poststroke functional recovery and by using HSAT these patients can be screened and diagnosed for OSA sooner and improve their poststroke functional and motor recovery (Boulos et al., 2017).

The question being asked is therapeutic in nature. The design of the study is listed under the methods section as a single-center prospective observational study. An observational study means that the researchers do not intervene by manipulating the independent variable (Polit & Beck, 2017). The independent variable within this study would be that all participants have had a stroke or TIA. Prospective designs are studies that begin with a presumed cause and look forward in time for its effect (Polit & Beck, 2017). Within this study, OSA was the presumed cause in a delay of functional and motor recovery for those patients who suffered a stroke or TIA. This design method was appropriate for the group being used. A control group would not have helped to validate the use of HSAT in stroke recovery since those within that group would not be suffering from the same effects. The use of t-tests, Wilcoxon rank sum-test, and multivariate logistic regression were used to analyze the data (Boulos et al., 2017). The results demonstrated that the use of HSAT in the poststroke or TIA population was effective at expediting the diagnosis and treatment of OSA (Boulos et al., 2017).

Sleep Apnea Study Number Two