Research Questions
A research question shapes the entirety of a research study. While some research …show more content…
article, the research question is: “Do size and ownership type make a difference in the efficiency and cost results of hospitals in Washington state (Coyne et al. 2009; 164)?” This research question is remarkably clear, leading to a better discussion of the question. It is free of complication jargon and directly asks about the correlation between the independent and dependent variables in an interesting fashion (Coyne et al. 2009).
Messina The Messina et al. article, in contrast, has more than one research question: “First, what is the nature of the relationship between patient satisfaction (as measured by scored instruments) and inpatient admissions in acute care hospitals? Second, does the relationship between patient satisfaction (as measured by scored instruments) and inpatient admissions differ between teaching hospitals and nonteaching hospitals (Messina et al. 2009; 177)?” This paper finds that by asking two complex questions of this nature in an article of this length damages the reader’s ability to comprehend all of the issue and how they relate to one another. In order to have clarity, each of these research questions should have its own research paper with the author writing a third paper connecting the two. While this can be accomplished in a single paper, the article lacks this level of organizational structure. The research questions are unnecessarily complicated (Messina et al. …show more content…
study used a two-way analysis of variance in their study, the Messina et al. study did not (Coyne et al. 2009).. The Messina et al. study relied heavily on mean, medina, mode and Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficients. The data from the Messina et al’ study are already weaker because they originated from a qualitative measure, but the statistical tools used were also weaker and extremely limited (Messina et al. 2009).
Authors’ Conclusions
Coyne
The conclusions in the Coyne et al. study are well founded and answer the research question. The article successfully concludes that size and ownership type do impact overall efficiency. The research flows nicely from the literature review (in which Coyne is a founding author) and possible extraneous variables are considered and discussed (Coyne et al. 2009).
Messina
In stark contrast the Messina et al. article’s conclusion failed to answer one of the founding research questions. The question dealt with the possible relationship between patient satisfaction and volume regardless of type. The literature review seems inconclusive and the article’s conclusion seems unsupported (Messina et al. 2009).
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