HS880 Unit 10 Mixed Methods Results Chapter Draft Example

Chapter 4, Assembled: A Unit 10 Results Chapter Draft for a Mixed Methods Study of Why Radiographers Keep Shielding

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Purdue University Global

HS880: Doctoral Project III: Data Collection and Analysis

Unit 10 Results Chapter Draft

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[Date]

Wrenfield Health and every result are composite and shown as placeholders; the methods sources cited are real.

4.1 Overview

This chapter reports the results of a convergent mixed methods study (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) of gonadal shielding among radiographers in the Wrenfield Health imaging network. It describes who took part, reports departures from the approved plan, answers each research question with the survey, the interviews or both, and then presents the merged findings. Interpretation is reserved for Chapter 5.

4.2 Participants

Of [286] radiographers invited, [121] eligible respondents completed the survey, a response of about [42] percent. Compared with the network's roster, outpatient radiographers were slightly overrepresented and early-career radiographers slightly underrepresented. Two respondents skipped the shielding question. The survey sample's makeup is set out in Table 4.0, beside the roster. Seventeen of [29] interview volunteers were interviewed, nine who reported routine shielding and eight who did not, drawn from all three site types, though only two from urgent care.

4.3 Departures From the Approved Plan

Readers should weigh every result below against five events, reported in full in Appendix F. Because staff had been trained to report outside email, the first invitations drew few replies; after an approved amendment, invitations came from an internal sender, posters with a QR code went up and the survey stayed open three extra weeks. Respondents who answered after the change were more often outpatient staff with long careers. Interviews therefore started three weeks late. Two framework domains, optimism and goals, proved unreliable in this sample and were excluded from statistical testing. And a coding disagreement led the second coder to code eight transcripts rather than five.

4.4 Research Question One: How Common Is Routine Shielding?

About one respondent in three ([39] of [119]) said they shield a child's AP pelvis film often or always. That share differed sharply by workplace, from roughly one in six hospital radiographers to nearly half of those in outpatient centers, and it climbed with years in practice. The type of training program made no clear difference. These figures appear in Table 4.1 and Figure 4.1.

The chapter places the departures before the first finding, so that no reader meets the one-in-three figure without first learning how the sample was gathered.

4.5 Research Question Two: Which Domains Differ?

Twelve domains were compared between the [39] routine shielders and the [80] others, with false discovery rate control across the twelve tests (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1995). Four domains separated the groups. In order of effect size they were the quick, habitual decisions made during an examination; the expectations of parents and colleagues; the cues and layout of the room; and how radiographers see their professional role. The largest gap was in the first, where routine shielders far more often agreed that they shield without deciding to. Knowledge showed essentially no gap; both groups knew the guidance. Beliefs about consequences looked different before adjustment but not after. In a model that also accounted for site type and career length, the decision-processes and social-influences domains kept their association with routine shielding, while the room-environment and identity domains fell short of significance; outpatient work remained associated with shielding. Tables 4.2 and 4.3 give the figures.

4.6 Research Question Three: How Do Radiographers Describe Their Decisions?

Interviews ran a median of about forty minutes, by video or in person, and opened with the last examination in which the radiographer had or had not placed a shield. Almost every interviewee knew the recommendation had changed. What they described instead were moments: a parent asking where the apron was, a shield hanging by the table at hand height, a hand that reached for it before the radiographer had thought. Eleven of seventeen spoke of parents expecting a shield, ten of acting automatically and nine of where the shield was kept. Eight worried that they, not the protocol, would face any complaint. Six linked shielding to being careful with children. Table 4.4 lists every belief statement with its count.

4.7 Merged Findings

Figure 4.2 sets each domain's survey result beside its interview themes. Three domains converge: decision processes, social influences and environmental context differ in the survey and dominate the interviews. Professional identity is complementary; the survey shows a modest difference and the interviews explain its content. Beliefs about consequences is discordant: interviewees raised the fear of complaints often, yet the adjusted survey comparison found no group difference. Knowledge converges in the opposite direction, high in both groups and in both strands. The integration follows published principles for joint displays (Fetters et al., 2013).

4.8 Results That Did Not Emerge

Several expected or possible results did not appear, and they are reported here with the same weight as the findings above. Training program type was not associated with routine shielding. Skills and intentions were silent in both strands: survey scores did not differ, and interviewees rarely raised either. Beliefs about capabilities did not differ, and no interviewee described being unable to perform an examination without a shield. Urgent care findings rest on twenty survey respondents and two interviews, too few to describe that site type separately. Optimism and goals cannot be assessed because their scales were unreliable. None of these absences is interpreted here; each is noted so that Chapter 5 does not draw conclusions from silence.

4.9 How Tables and Figures Are Placed

Each table appears directly after the paragraph that first reports its contents, rather than gathered at the end of the chapter, so that readers can check every figure against its source without turning pages. Table titles name the population, the measure and the comparison, and footnotes name the test and any adjustment. The joint display is placed last because it draws on all the others. Earlier drafts of these tables, prepared in the analysis output unit, were revised only for numbering and for one corrected denominator in the site-type row of Table 4.1.

4.10 Sensitivity Checks

With recruitment wave entered as a covariate, every odds ratio stayed within a tenth of its original value. Restricting the domain comparison to respondents with complete domain data produced the same four domains.

4.11 Summary

About a third of radiographers in this network reported routinely shielding children during pelvic radiography, more often in outpatient centers and among longer-serving staff. Routine shielders and others knew the guidance equally well. They differed most in automatic decision-making, social influences and the room's cues. Interviews described the same three influences acting together in the moment of the examination.

References

Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Methodological), 57(1), 289-300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2517-6161.1995.tb02031.x

Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Fetters, M. D., Curry, L. A., & Creswell, J. W. (2013). Achieving integration in mixed methods designs: Principles and practices. Health Services Research, 48(6 Pt 2), 2134-2156. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.12117