Description

Part One: Please begin by responding to the following questions. 

1. What factors must a researcher consider in selecting an existing instrument for use in a study?
2. How does a researcher locate an existing instrument?

Part Two: Search and locate an existing instrument that will be used to address your research question. Post the title of the instrument selected and the level of measurement on the tool. Next, post a description of the type of scale used in the instrument. Include a brief discussion of data collection procedures that will be presented in your proposal.

Part One

What factors must a researcher consider in selecting an existing instrument for use in a study?

            There are several factors to consider when selecting an instrument to use in a study.  Validity and reliability of the collected data and, above all, their potential comparability with data from previous investigations must be prioritized during this phase (Bastos, Duquia, González-Chica, Mesa, & Bonamigo, 2014). The reliability of an instrument denotes the consistency of the measures obtained of an attribute, item, or situation in a study or clinical practice (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2013).  The validity of an instrument determines the extent to which it actually reflects or is able to measure the construct being examined (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2013).  Selecting an instrument is a difficult task, but it is important to meeting the objective of the research study.   

How does a researcher locate an existing instrument?

            The most helpful way to determine an appropriate existing instrument is a thorough literature review and searching an existing database such as Health and Psychological Instruments Online (HAPI), Medline or CINAHL (Grove et al., 2013).  In order for a researcher to locate an existing instrument, certain steps need to be taken.  A broad literature searches to look for instruments that assess the problem in question needs to be conducted. The bibliographic search can start in the traditional bibliographical resources in healthcare, such as PubMed, but it must also take in consideration those available in other scientific fields, such as psychology and education whenever necessary (Bastos et al, 2014).  

Select an instrument that meets the goals of your study, considering ethical, budgetary and time constraints, among others (Bastos et al, 2014). 

Part Two

            The existing instrument used to address my research question is questionnaires.  Common measurement approaches used in nursing research, including physiological measures, observations, interviews, questionnaires, and scales (Bastos et al, 2014).  The instrument for data collection is a key element of the traditional questionnaires, which are used to investigate various topics of interest among participants of scientific studies (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2013).  Questionnaires can be useful in measuring concepts within a research study. Researchers are encouraged to use questions in exactly the same form as questionnaires in previous studies to determine the validity of the questionnaire for new samples (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2013).

            It is important to develop a questionnaire that identifies the information needed and to search the literature for questionnaires that match the criteria for research.  Validity is an important part of the research study.  Study participants commonly fail to respond to all the questions on a questionnaire, this is a problem because it can threaten the validity of the instrument and affects data collection (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2013).  Data from questionnaires are measured on an ordinal level, which limits analysis.  Scales are useful to help measure the data used within a questionnaire, the scale to be used is the Likert scale. The Likert scale determines the opinion or attitude of a subject and contains a number of declarative statements with a scale after each statement; the Likert scale is the most commonly used of the scaling techniques in nursing and healthcare studies (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2013).