Assignment: Scholarly Integrative Review
Assignment: Scholarly Integrative Review
Assess diverse ways of knowing in nursing for their appropriateness in conducting nursing research and evidence-based nursing practice Critique relevant primary research sources for their potential to provide evidence-based solutions to clinical nursing problems Employ principles of ethical conduct of research in seeking evidence-based resources that support professional nursing practice changes Propose evidence-based recommendations for practice changes that address clinical nursing problems for improving quality of care
Prompt Choose a clinical problem or issue, with your instructor’s approval, that might be encountered in nursing practice. For this assessment, prepare a scholarly integrative review of the literature that will support a recommendation for a practice change to solve or improve the identified clinical problem or issue. To cover the appropriate range of the research, you should search for and retrieve six current and relevant nursing research studies from primary sources that are relevant to your clinical topic of interest (these should be the articles from your annotated bibliography). Follow the assignment guidelines below to prepare a scholarly integrative review of the research literature you retrieved. Specifically, your integrative review of the literature should include the following critical elements: I. Introduction
A. What is the purpose of the integrative review?
B. Clearly articulate the topic of interest, problem statement, and the research question being studied. C. What variables of interest (such as concepts, target population, setting, interventions, etc.) will be used to guide the review of literature? D. Discuss the background and significance of the problem to nursing. Be sure to substantiate your claims with specific examples from your research.
II. Literature Search Methods
A. Identify keywords, subject headings, and combinations used in the initial search. B. Which databases were searched? C. State the inclusion/exclusion criteria for the sample of research reports. In other words, how did you make decisions to narrow the search and focus
the literature review? How was the final sample of research reports determined?
III. Data Analysis and Critical Appraisal A. Analyze the quality of each study. In other words, is the problem well formulated and the purpose of the study clear? Is the study approach well
designed and executed? Does the study demonstrate understanding of related studies? Do the findings advance knowledge? B. Note each study’s strengths and limitations. C. Identify gaps in the literature and reflect on why these may exist. D. Identify similarities and inconsistencies across the studies.
IV. Synthesis, Interpretation and Presentation of Results
A. Develop an evidence table of your results that addresses the following criteria for each study: report citation, design, method, sample, data collection, data analysis, validity, and reliability of the findings. This table should appear in the Appendix of your paper.
B. Identify major trends or patterns in the research reviewed. C. Can you make generalizations across the studies? Why or why not? D. What conclusions can you draw? Be sure to use a logical chain of evidence to support them. E. Provide a scholarly summary of the research reviewed that describes the “state of the science” presented by the research reports. F. Make practice recommendations based on the research reviewed.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
