Sample letter sent
to the student (and advisor) after a consultation
|
May 1, 2002
Rowdy Raider
1234 Every Day Drive
Dayton, OH 45678
Dear Rowdy: |
Student's
Description
of
the Proposed Study
The student submits a description
of the thesis (Chapter 3) 2 weeks in advance
of the meeting. |
This letter
is a report of the meeting that you, Dr. Noit Ahl, and I had on April 29,
2002, about your master's thesis in nursing. For your thesis, you
plan to conduct a descriptive, correlational study to determine the relationship
between perceived satisfaction with educational opportunity and organizational
commitment, overall work satisfaction, and intent to remain in the organization
among staff nurses at a regional medical center. Nurses whose primary
job is to provide direct patient care and have clinical or non-managerial
responsibilities will be included in the study. |
Participants |
You expect
between 43 and 119 nurses to participate. |
Project
timeline
|
You plan
to defend your proposal in either December 2002, or January 2003. Data
collection will begin as soon as possible after the defense. You
anticipate the data collection will be completed by March 2003. You
will be graduating in June 2003. |
Instruments
to be used and scoring instructions
|
You
will be using four instruments in your study, Perception of Hospital
Educational Opportunity Scale (Kirsch, 1990), Organizational Commitment
Scale (Monday, Steers, & Porter, 1979), Job Description Index (Smith,
Kendall, & Hulling, 1969), and Intent to Remain Scale (Price & Mueller,
1981).
The Perception of Hospital Educational Opportunity Scale has
16 (7 negatively worded and 9 positively worded) statements regarding
nurses' perceptions of hospital sponsored staff development activities. Respondents
rate the statements using a 7-point Likert scale from 1 = "Strongly Disagree" to
7 = "Strongly Agree." After reverse scoring the negatively worded
statements, responses are summed and divided by 16 to provide a mean
score. Higher scores indicate a more positive perception of educational
opportunity.
The Organizational Commitment Scale has 9 positively worded statements
about the feelings a nurse may have about the employing organization. Respondents
rate the statements using a 7-point Likert scale from 1 = "Strongly Disagree" to
7 = "Strongly Agree." A mean score is calculated as it was for
the Perception of Hospital Educational Opportunity Scale. Higher
scores indicate a more positive level of organizational commitment. |
Demographic questions |
Additionally, you constructed
a demographic questionnaire to determine age, rank, gender, highest nursing
degree held, and length of time as a nurse.
|
Calculations and
descriptive statistics
|
Frequencies and frequency percentages will
be calculated on all variables in your study. Additional descriptive
statistics such as the mean, standard deviation, median, mode, minimum,
maximum, and range will be calculated for age, length of time as a nurse,
and scores for all four instruments. |
Research
questions, hypotheses and tools used to answer them
|
| Research Question #1: What is the perceived level of satisfaction
of staff nurses with educational opportunities at a regional medical
center? |
Descriptive statistics on the scores for the Perception of Hospital
Educational Opportunity Scale will be used to answer this
question.
| Research Question #2: What is the level of organizational
commitment of staff nurses at a regional medical center? |
Descriptive statistics on the scores for the Organizational Commitment
Scale will be used to answer this question.
| Research Question #3: What is the relationship between the
perceived satisfaction with educational opportunity and organizational
commitment, overall work satisfaction, intent to remain, and selected
demographic variables? |
Multiple regression analysis will be conducted to answer this question. Indicator
variables for gender, educational level, and rank will be entered into
the model as independent variables. (The actual number of indicators
needed for educational level and rank will be determined by how many
different levels are represented in the sample.) Additionally,
scores for organizational commitment, overall work satisfaction, and
intent to remain will be entered into the model as independent variables. Perceived
satisfaction with educational opportunity as measured by the Perception
of Hospital Educational Opportunity Scale will be entered into the
model as the dependent variable. |
Special notes: Handling
a potential flaw in the statistical model |
Since educational level
and rank may be correlated, the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) indicating
multicollinearity will be checked to ensure the assumptions necessary for
using multiple regression analysis are met. If the assumption is
violated, then only one of those two factors will be included in the model. |
Consultant Calculates Sample
Size
Assumptions
affecting the sample size
|
In calculating necessary sample size, I assumed
one variable would be needed for gender, one for educational level, and
three for rank, for a total of 8 independent variables in the analysis. The
power analysis calculations assume that you are going to use all 8 variables
in the regression model and that you want to know if any one variable is
significant given that all of the other 7 are already in the model. The
overall alpha level was set at 0.05. I set different levels of overall
R-squares or total amount of variance in the data explained by the variables
already in the model. Also, I assumed that you would want to detect
an increase of 5% in explained variance for the variable to be significant. |
Sample size |
To achieve 80% power with overall R-square of 0.50,
you need complete data on 80 participants. |
Method of calculation |
Preliminary power calculations were performed
based on the formula in an article by Sande Milton (see reference
below.) Final power calculations were performed using PASS version
6.0. |
Future Contact
The SCC offers assistance with
the data. |
Also during our meeting, I pointed out your options
for data entry. If you would like us to enter your data into a
spreadsheet for you, our charge for this service is $25.00 per hour. (The
estimated time to enter your data is 2 1/2 minutes per questionnaire.) Your
other option is to enter the data yourself. We accept data in a
variety of forms (Excel, Qedit, Word and others.) In either
case, please consult with Mary Alspaugh in our office prior to your data
entry..
The only other charge is $30.00 per hour for data management. Data
management is SAS programming to format the data to make it useful for
analysis as well as to label the data for easier reading. |
Student is asked to inform the
SCC of modifications to the plan. |
If you have any further questions or if you
feel I have not understood your goals, please let me know. Also,
I need to be kept informed of any changes that you may make to your study. I
enjoyed meeting you and look forward to working with you on this project. Good
luck with your work!
Sincerely,
Stacie E. Taylor
Statistical Consultant |
A file number is provided for
all future communications. |
SCC #2001035
|
The advisor is sent a copy of
the report |
cc: Dr. Noit Ahl
Reference:
Milton, S., 1986. A Sample Size Formula for Multiple Regression Studies, Public
Opinion Quarterly (50), 112-118. |
