Nursing Students Beliefs about Smoking - Essay Example

The title of this research in itself represents the statement of the problem whereby the context is simply and clearly established with the purpose of relating the study and the specific aim of introducing the use of professional treatment intervention. The treatment intervention provides a plausible explanation or a solution to the problem being identified or questioned. The whole article denotes a simple descriptive research design with a quantitative survey identified under the two variables of nursing students =x; smoking beliefs and habits =y. In general, the problem cannot be rated as trivial especially when questionnaires exceed the 10-item minimum limit. The title could do a little revision though to make it appear scholarly.

In its abstract, it has identified a total sample population of n=197 whereby only 6% creates the sample size. The sample is too small to reflect the subject population thereby the confidence level is heightened too actively. The chances of error are so remote here. However, it has been noted that in determining a sample size for a given level of accuracy, the worst case of 50% should be used. The type of sampling employed and how the respondents were selected among the school’s total population of 424 undergraduate students was derived. Such information vital to the methods used in the analysis of data was not identified in the abstract nor in its methodology.

A literature review was noted and limited to an Italian School of Nursing and a hospital in London. The conceptual Framework is not clearly discussed and identified.

Kidder relates that “a critical portion of a research study is the portion on the instruments used to gather data”. The validity of the conclusion derived from the statistical instruments depends greatly on its characteristics. Therefore the questionnaire used as the main tool in this research should be attached in the bibliography subject to further studies and referencing. Reliability which refers to the extent of an instrument’s consistency should be able to elicit the same response when applied to respondents. Since such a document is not identified nor presented in this article, its validity, and reliability cannot be substantiated and investigated. Overall evaluation of the instrument cannot be conducted at this moment.

The quantitative results of data gathered do not clearly correlate with the problem encountered and stated in the sense that it has focused on the end result of treatment intervention as its instrumentation rather than on the smoking patterns and behavior itself and the possible effects of implementing a certain kind of treatment intervention.