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| An undesirable and unintended, although not necessarily unexpected, result of therapy or other intervention. |
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| The summary of a study in clear and concise terms. Usually limited to 100 to 300 words. |
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| Method of placing of subjects in study groups that can be random, matched, stratified, and so forth |
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| Statements taken for granted or considered true, even though they have not been scientifically tested. |
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| Characteristics of persons or things (e.g. age, eye color) |
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| The loss of participants during the course of a study. This can introduce bias by changing the composition of the sample initially drawn, particularly if more subjects are lost from one group than another. |
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| Discovery research that seeks to add knowledge or to support or refute theories. |
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| That quality of a measurement devise that tends to result in a misrepresentation of what is being measured in a particular direction. For example, the questionnaire item, "Don't you agree that your physician is doing a good job?" is biased because it encourages favorable responses. |
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| Refers to the logical relationship among search terms. It consists of three logical operators; OR, AND, NOT. |
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| Intensive exploration of a single unit of study, such as a person, family, group, community, or institution. |
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| Relationship between two variables in which one variable (independent variable) is thought to cause or determine the presence of the other variable (dependent variable). Three criteria must be satisfied: (1) the cause precedes the effect in time, (2) the two variables are empirically correlated with one another, and (3) the observed correlation between the two variables cannot be explained away as being the result of the influence of some third variable that causes both of them. |
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| An enumeration of the characteristics of some population. It collects data from all members of the population, in contrast to a survey, which is limited to a sample. |
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| The reference to an authority or author of a document. |
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| A study in which some specific group is studied over time, although data may be collected from different members in each set of observations (e.g. a study of the clinical practice of physician assistants who graduated in 1976, in which questionnaires were sent every 5 years. |
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| Commonly known as the "control group" a group not receiving a treatment, reward, or intervention. |
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| A prospective study comparing an intervention to a control involving human subjects. |
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| Management of data in research so subjects' identities are not linked with their responses. This differs from anonymity, in which the subjects' identities are not known. |
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| An image, idea, or theory that has some general meaning not directly observable. |
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| The degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships. In other words, it is based on the logical relationship among variables (e.g. patients who report that they are satisfied with their physician assistant are more likely to comply with treatment). |
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| The extent to which the method of measurement includes all the major elements relevant to the construct being measured. |
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| A group of subjects to whom no experimental stimulus, treatment, or intervention is administered and who should resemble the experimental group in all other respects (also known as comparison group). |
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| Simply entering available subjects into the study until the desired sample size is reached (also known as accidental sampling). |
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| Experimental design in which more than one type of treatment is administered to each subject; the treatments are provided sequentially, rather than concurrently, and comparisons are made of the effects of the different treatments on the same subject. |
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| A study that is based on observations representing a single point in time. Contrasted with a longitudinal study, which is based on two or more observations over time. |
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| The logical model in which specific expectations of hypotheses are developed on the basis of general principles. |
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| Characteristics or attributes of the subjects that are collected to describe the sample. |
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| A phenomenon that is affected by the researcher's manipulation of the independent variable. |
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| A research plan undertaken to define the characteristics, relationships, or both, of variables, based on systematic observation of these variables. |
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| An experiment in which neither the subjects nor those who administer the treatment know who is in the experimental group or control group. |
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| Sampling requirement identified by the researcher that eliminate or exclude an element or subject from being in a sample. |
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| The degree to which the results of a study generalize to the population. The process of testing the validity of a measure, such as an index or scale, is conducted by examining its relationship to other, presumed indicators of the same variable. |
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| A study of whether a research project can or should be carried out, as determined by examining the time and money commitment; the researcher's expertise; the availability of subjects, facilities, and equipment; the cooperation of others; and ethical considerations. |
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| The quality of a research finding that justifies the interference that it respresents something more than the specific observations on which it was based. Sometimes this involves the gneralization of findings from a sample to a population. Other times, it is a matter of concepts: If you are able to discover why patients consume alcohol, can you generalize that discovery to other substance abuses? |
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| A term coined in reference to a series of productivity studies at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Chicago. The researchers discovered that their presence affected the behavior of the workers being studied. The term now refers to any impact of research on the subject of study. |
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| The effect of an event unrelated to the planned study that occurs during the time of the study and could influence the responses of subjects. |
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| A provisional theory set forth to explain some class of phenomena, either accepted as a guide to future investigation (working hypothesis) or assumed for the sake of argument and testing. A statement to be tested in a study. An expectation about the nature of things derived from a theory. A statement about the relationships. |
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| Sampling requirements identified by the researcher that must be present for the element or subject to be included in the sample. |
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| A phenomenon that is manipulated by the researcher and is predicted to have an effect on another phenomenon. A variable whose values are not problematical in an analysis but are taken as simply given. It is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable. |
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| The logical model in which general principles are developed from specific observations. |
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| The process used to inform subjects of the risks, benefits, and goals of research studies. It usually involves a printed information section and a signature page attesting to understanding those risks and benefits and consent to participate. Consent and the consent form may also outline the subject's expected obligations to the study. |
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| A process of examining study proposals for ethical concerns by a committee representing an institution. |
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| Institutional Review Board (IRB) |
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| A specially constituted review body established or designated by an entity to protect the welfare of human subjects recruited to participate in biomedical or behavioral research. |
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| The extent to which the individual items constituting a composite measure are correlated with the measure itself. This provides one test of the wisdom of including all the items in the composite measure. Threats to this include history, maturation, testing, instrumentation, selection, loss of subjects, causal time-order, compensation, demoralization, and diffusion or imitation of treatments. |
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| The degree of consistency between two raters who are independently assigning ratings to a variable or attribute being investigated. |
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| A type of ordinal measurement in survey questionnaires. A verbal frequency scale. This uses the response categories: strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. |
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| A review of previous relevant literature that serves as a basis or beginning point for a research endeavor. |
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| A study design involving the collection of data at different points in time. |
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| Subjects who are lost to a study or drop out from the study or a group. It does not necessarily mean the death of the subject. |
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| A type of research developed to examine the end results of patient care; the strategies used are a departure from traditional scientific endeavors and incorporate evaluation research, epidemiology, and economic theory perspectives. In nonpatient care settings, the focus is on objective measurement of change. |
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| A way of looking at a natural phenomenon that encompasses a set of philosophical assumptions and that guides one's approach to inquiry. |
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| A characteristic of a population or sample. |
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| A smaller version of a proposed study conducted to develop or refine the methodology, such as the treatment, instrument, or data collection process. |
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| A chemically inert substance given in the guise of medicine for its psychologically suggestive effect; used in controlled clinical trials to determine whether improvement and side effects may reflect imagination or anticipation rather than actual power of a drug. |
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| The total number of members (or persons) in a defined study group or area. Any class of phenomena arbitrarily defined on the basis of its unique and observable characteristics. A set of people or events from which a sample is taken. |
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| The nonnumerical examination and interpretation of observations for the purpose of describing and explaining the phenomena that those observations reflect. |
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| The use of applied mathematics to assist in the research process. |
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| Quasi-experimental designs |
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| Research designs used when the researcher has little interest in establishing cause-and-effect relationships but is more concerned about measuring constructs and collecting data from a representative sample of individuals. The internal validity of these designs is threatened, and causal inferences about the effect of independent variables on dependent variables are difficult to make. |
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| A collection of phenomena so selected that each phenomenon in the population has an equal chance of being selected. |
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| The external and internal consistency of a measurement. In the abstract, whether a particular technique, applied repeatedly to the same object, would yield the same result each time. |
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| The plan, protocol, format, and parameters of the research project. |
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| A statement expressing differences or relationships among phenomena, the acceptance or non-acceptance of which implies the existence of a null hypothesis that is susceptible to a probability estimate. |
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| The methods used in systematic inquiry into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, and so on. Examples include experiments, survey research, field research, content analysis, replication, historical research, comparative research, and evaluation research. |
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| Written proposal that provides a preview of why a study will be undertaken and how it will be conducted. It is a useful devise for planning and is required in most circumstances when research is being conducted. |
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| A formal statement of the purpose of the investigation stated as a question. |
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| The number of persons participating in a survey divided by the number selected in the sample, in the form of a percentage; the percentage of questionnaires sent out that are returned. |
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| A collection of phenomena selected to represent some well-defined population. |
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| Inherent bias in a sample. Sources: nonrandom, systematic sampling; incomplete or inaccurate sampling frame; nonresponse. It causes systematic error not compensated to each category or point on a measurement scale. |
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| A process of disovery by systematic investigation. |
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| The degree to which a scale is in fact consistently measuring the variable that it was designed to measure. |
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| An observable characteristic of an object or event that can be described according to some well-defined classification or measurement scheme; an observable phenomenon. |
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