HS880 Unit 7 Descriptive Sample Results Summary Example

Who Answered Before What They Answered: A Unit 7 Descriptive Results Summary for a Survey of Radiographers

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HS880: Doctoral Project III: Data Collection and Analysis

Unit 7 Descriptive Results Summary

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

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

Why This Section Comes First

Readers cannot judge findings about shielding until they know whose shielding is described. A sample that overrepresents one kind of site or one career stage could produce results that reflect its makeup rather than the network. This section therefore describes response, compares respondents with everyone invited and reports what is missing, so that later sections can be read with those facts in mind.

Response

The survey was sent to [286] eligible radiographers. [134] responses were submitted. [13] were removed: [9] respondents answered the eligibility question as working only outside projection radiography, and [4] submitted the first page only. [121] eligible responses remain, a response of [42.3] percent. [38] responses arrived before the recruitment amendment and [83] after it, a pattern consistent with the value of repeated, varied contacts (Dillman et al., 2014); the amendment is described in the deviations section.

Respondents Compared With the Roster

The network's human resources office supplied aggregate counts for the roster, by site type and years in practice, with no individual data.

Site type. Hospital departments: [36] percent of respondents against [41] percent of the roster. Urgent care: [17] percent against [18] percent. Outpatient centers: [47] percent against [41] percent. Outpatient radiographers responded somewhat more than others.

Years in practice. Fewer than 5 years: [18] percent of respondents against [22] percent of the roster. Five to 14 years: [34] percent against [34] percent. Fifteen to 24 years: [28] percent against [26] percent. Twenty-five years or more: [20] percent against [18] percent. Early-career radiographers responded slightly less.

Training program. [58] percent of respondents trained in a hospital-based certificate program and [42] percent in an associate or bachelor's degree program. The roster does not record training, so no comparison is possible.

The sample resembles the roster closely enough to describe the network, but not so closely that the outpatient tilt can be ignored when shielding rates are reported by site.

Missing Data

Shielding frequency item: [2] of [121] respondents left it blank; they are excluded from analyses that use it, leaving [119].

Domain items: missing responses ranged from [0] to [6] percent per item. The highest missingness was on the two optimism items, which several respondents commented were unclear. Following the analysis plan, a domain score was computed when at least half of its items were answered. On that rule, domain scores were available for [114] to [121] respondents, depending on the domain.

Demographic items: no missing site type; [3] missing training program.

No pattern of missingness by site type or years in practice was apparent in a cross-tabulation of respondents with and without missing domain items.

Internal Consistency

Cronbach's alpha for the domain scales ranged from [0.48] for optimism to [0.89] for social influences. Twelve of 14 domains met the planned threshold of [0.60]; optimism ([0.48]) and goals ([0.57]) did not. Their handling is reported in the deviations section.

Early and Late Respondents

Because recruitment changed partway through collection, respondents were compared by wave without identifying anyone, using each response's submission date. Late respondents were more often from outpatient centers ([52] percent against [37] percent of early respondents) and more often had fifteen or more years in practice ([53] percent against [37] percent). Training program did not differ notably between waves. These differences are reported here so that later sections can check whether wave, rather than radiographers' circumstances, explains any finding. The analysis plan's sensitivity check adds wave to the main model for that purpose.

Interviewees

[17] radiographers were interviewed, from [29] volunteers. By self-reported shielding: [9] routine and [8] not routine. By site type: [7] hospital, [2] urgent care, [8] outpatient. By years in practice: [3] fewer than 5, [6] 5 to 14, [5] 15 to 24, [3] 25 or more. Interviews lasted a median of [41] minutes. Urgent care is thin in the interview group because only [3] urgent care radiographers volunteered, so interview themes for that site type will be described with particular caution.

What This Section Does Not Report

No shielding frequency, domain comparison or interview theme appears here. Those results follow in the order of the research questions. Reporting the sample first, separately, keeps readers from forming a view of the findings before they know whose findings they are, which is the logic of describing participants before outcomes in standard reporting guidance for mixed methods studies (O'Cathain et al., 2008).

Notes for Interpretation

Two features will matter later. The outpatient tilt in the survey sample means network-wide shielding rates should be reported both overall and by site type. The low reliability of two domains means results for optimism and goals will be presented descriptively only. The descriptive tables follow the principle that each should stand on its own, with its population and denominator in the title (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018).

References

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

Dillman, D. A., Smyth, J. D., & Christian, L. M. (2014). Internet, phone, mail, and mixed-mode surveys: The tailored design method (4th ed.). Wiley.

O'Cathain, A., Murphy, E., & Nicholl, J. (2008). The quality of mixed methods studies in health services research. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 13(2), 92-98. https://doi.org/10.1258/jhsrp.2007.007074