Nursing Research

This graphic identifies two categories of statistics, descriptive and inferential, commonly found in nursing research. These terms can be found in quantitative studies and can help you to determine if an article meets assignment criteria. This isn't a complete list of statistics you might find. 

CINAHL

Qualitative:

 Use the Clinical Queries menu on the Advanced Search:

• Qualitative-High Sensitivity for a broad search
• Qualitative-High Specificity for a narrow, specific search
• Qualitative-Best Balance for something in between

Quantitative:

There is no easy way to specify quantitative studies in CINAHL.

Randomized Controlled Trials (check box or in the Publication Type menu) are often quantitative, or at least have a quantitative aspect.

 Use the Publication Type menu:

• Equations and Formulas
• Statistics
• Tables and Charts
• Randomized Controlled Trials (if you haven't already done a search with the check box, see above)
  (you can select more than one option in the drop down box by using CTRL-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac)) 

These don't guarantee quantitative studies, but they help narrow things down.

Other Databases

If you want to limit your search to quantitative studies, first try "quantitative" as a keyword (example: lactation and quantitative).

Other ways are to use methods as keywords. Such as :

• Statistics
• Chi square
• Correlation
• Data
• Anova
• Survey
• Pretest
• Posttest