HCS 465 Week 1 Introduction to Research and the Research Process Example

From a Manager's Hunch to a Testable Question: Walking a Hospital Environmental Services Problem Through the Research Process, Question and Hypothesis

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HCS/465: Health Care Research Utilization

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The hospital, the department and its figures are composites written for a model paper.

Eight months ago, the environmental services department of a 320-bed community hospital moved its housekeepers from 8-hour to 12-hour shifts to reduce the number of handoffs between rooms. Since then, the department director has noticed more unscheduled absences and more last-minute calls to cover shifts. She suspects the longer shifts are to blame. This paper uses her suspicion to introduce research and the research process, showing how a manager's hunch becomes a question that data can answer.

A Hunch Is Not Yet a Research Problem

The director's observation is valuable, but it is not yet a research problem. A research problem states an issue that matters, that can be studied and whose answer is not already known (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Here, the issue matters because unplanned absence strains remaining staff and leaves rooms uncleaned, which can delay admissions and affect infection control. It can be studied because payroll records show every scheduled and unscheduled absence. And its answer is not obvious: absences could have risen because of the schedule, a seasonal illness wave, a new attendance policy or changes in who works in the department.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this study is to compare unscheduled absence among environmental services staff in the 12 months before and the 12 months after the change from 8-hour to 12-hour shifts at one community hospital.

Research Question

Did the rate of unscheduled absence hours per 100 scheduled hours among environmental services staff change after the move from 8-hour to 12-hour shifts?

A good question names the variables, the population and the comparison (Farrugia et al., 2010). The independent variable is shift length, the dependent variable is unscheduled absence and the population is environmental services staff at one hospital. The comparison is before and after the change.

Hypotheses

Directional hypothesis: The rate of unscheduled absence hours per 100 scheduled hours will be higher in the 12 months after the change to 12-hour shifts than in the 12 months before.

Null hypothesis: There will be no difference in the rate of unscheduled absence between the two periods.

The hypothesis states an expected relationship that data can support or fail to support. It is directional because the director expects an increase; a nondirectional hypothesis would predict only a difference.

Choosing a Design

Because the question asks whether a measurable quantity changed, a quantitative design fits. A retrospective before and after comparison using existing payroll data is practical and inexpensive. It cannot prove that the schedule caused any change, because other things changed over the same period, but it can show whether the director's impression is supported by the numbers. A qualitative design, such as interviews with housekeepers about fatigue and family demands, would answer a different question, why absence changed, and could follow the quantitative step in a mixed methods study.

Sample and Data Collection

The sample is all environmental services staff employed in both periods, about 85 people, which avoids mixing the effect of the schedule with the effect of new hires. Data come from the payroll system: scheduled hours, unscheduled absence hours and the reason code for each absence. Data will be de-identified by human resources before analysis. The measure, unscheduled absence hours per 100 scheduled hours, adjusts for the fact that 12-hour shifts put more hours at stake each time someone calls out, so the two periods can be compared fairly.

Analysis and Interpretation

The analysis compares the absence rate in the two periods and checks for seasonal patterns by comparing matching months. If the rate is higher after the change, the report will describe the size of the difference and possible alternative explanations before drawing conclusions.

When Hypothesis Testing Is Premature

Scheel et al. (2021) argued that researchers often rush to test hypotheses before they have described a phenomenon well, defined their concepts and developed valid measures, producing tests that cannot answer the question they were meant to. Their warning fits this case: before testing whether 12-hour shifts raised absence, the director should confirm that "unscheduled absence" was recorded the same way in both periods, since a change in how supervisors coded call-outs could create a difference that has nothing to do with shift length. Descriptive work, such as plotting monthly absence for two years and reviewing reason codes, comes first.

Reviewing the Literature First

Before collecting any data, the director should find out what is already known. A search of health services and occupational health databases for shift length, absenteeism and hospital support staff would show whether earlier studies found a link, how they measured absence and what else they controlled for, such as age, commuting distance or second jobs. The literature might also suggest variables the director had not considered, such as whether 12-hour shifts reduce absence on some days while increasing it on others. A review keeps the study from repeating mistakes others have already made and helps define absence in a way that can be compared with published findings.

Ethics and Approval

Even though the data already exist, the study uses employee records. The hospital's research office or institutional review board will decide whether it is research or quality improvement, and human resources will remove identifiers so that no individual's attendance can be traced.

Dissemination

The findings will go to the director, the vice president of support services and the staff themselves, since housekeepers asked for the schedule change and deserve to know its effects.

Why Managers Need the Research Process

Few health administrators design formal studies, but all of them make decisions based on claims about what works. Knowing the research process helps a manager turn hunches into questions, choose the right data and recognize when a conclusion goes further than the evidence allows.

Conclusion

A director's suspicion about 12-hour shifts became a research problem, a purpose statement, a specific question, testable hypotheses and a practical design. Walking through the process shows how research begins in everyday management and why careful questions produce useful answers.

References

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Farrugia, P., Petrisor, B. A., Farrokhyar, F., & Bhandari, M. (2010). Research questions, hypotheses and objectives. Canadian Journal of Surgery, 53(4), 278-281.

Scheel, A. M., Tiokhin, L., Isager, P. M., & Lakens, D. (2021). Why hypothesis testers should spend less time testing hypotheses. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(4), 744-755. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620966795