Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial for NUR 288

The article "Identifying and defining research questions" is a fast read to help you with writing a research question for your QI Project. 

How to develop a research question for your QI Project improvement:

1. Identify your Topic (This is the starting place from where you develop a research question.)
   • at your clinical site 
2. Refine by Searching (find background information) (Before you can start to develop a research question, you may need to do some preliminary background research to see (1) what has already been done on the topic and (2) what are the issues surrounding the topic.) HINT: Find background information in health subject encyclopedias, high quality health/nursing website, and books.
   • Consider searching CDC, NIH, NLM, Joint Commission, QSEN, library databases such as Health & Wellness, or Health and Medicine.
3. Refine by Narrowing (Once you begin to understand the topic and the issues surrounding it, you can start to narrow your topic and develop a research question. 

   • Who: Are you interested in a specific group of people? Can your topic be narrowed by gender, sex, age, ethnicity, socio-economic status or something else? Are there any key figures related to your topic?

   • What: What are the issues surrounding your topic? Are there subtopics? In looking at background information, did you notice any gaps or questions that seemed unanswered?

   • Where: Can your topic be narrowed down to a geographic location? Warning: Don't get too narrow here. You might not be able to find enough information on a town or state.

   • When: Is your topic current or historical? Is it confined to a specific time period? Was there a causative event that led your topic to become an area of study?

     • You want to focus on current topics only.

   • Why: Why are you interested in this topic? Why should others be interested?

   • How: What kinds of information do you need? Journal articles, statistics, nursing guidelines?