Quantitative Article #2 - Research Paper Example

137). The second population under study included emergency department (ED) nurses working at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Shatin. A sample of 22 patients that needed NG tube reinsertion of tube placement check that presented themselves at the hospital participated in the study. The sample precluded patients who had certain medical complications including those who experienced vomiting tachypnea, and fever (Ho, Rainer & Graham, 2013, p. 138). Non-probability sampling was applied for the patients since not all patients had an equal chance of representation.

Those with complications did not have a chance to be included as part of the sample. For the patients, accidental sampling was applied considering that only those patients who met the criteria and availed themselves at the hospital during the study period were featured in the study. Although opportunity sampling is often associated with bias and therefore reduces the representativeness of the sample and the generalisability of the findings of the study, it was appropriate for this study since the samples were later randomized which served to increase the generalisabilility of the findings.

The sampling plan applied was also appropriate considering time constraints and the limited number of patients that visit the hospital who are part of the population under study. While a sample of 22 patients seems small, the number has the capacity to produce reliable and generalizable results. A sample of 30 nurses participated in the study. The sampling of nurses was done in two stages. Given that all the nurses in the hospital had equal chance of participating in the study, probability sampling applied for the first stage of sampling.

The second stage of sampling was based on convenience sampling considering that all those who returned their questionnaires featured in the study irrespective of