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CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

This section describes the research design, target population and sampling

procedure, data collection, data processing and data analysis.

The Research Design

This is a descriptive-relational study that utilized a One-Shot Survey Design. This

design is used when the study objective is to describe a situation/condition of a study

population as it exists or to determine/describe the characteristics of population/

respondents (David, 2005). The present study describes the characteristics of the

respondents with respect to their perception of patient advocacy behavior among nurses

in hospitals in the province of Antique. Thus this design is considered appropriate.

The Study Population

The respondents of the study will be the _____ selected nurses in hospitals in the

Province of Antique. The lists of nurses will be taken from the respective Nursing Service

Office to ascertain the target population. When the target population is determined, the

sample formula by Lynch and others, 1999 (Ardales, V., 2001) will be used to ascertain

the respondents of the study.

The stratified random sampling method will be used in the selection of the

respondents of the study. The strata that will be used in the study are private and public

hospitals (type of hospital). Table 1 shows the number of respondents per strata.

Lottery technique will be employed. Slips of paper containing the names of the

nurses will be placed in a bowl and will be randomly drawn until the desired sample size
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is achieved for each strata. The nurses whose names will be picked will be included in the

final administration of the questionnaire.

Table 1. Stratified Random Sampling of the Respondents

Ethical Consideration

Before the conduct of the study, the researcher will ask permission from the Chief

of Hospital and Chief Nurse of the hospital from the different hospitals in the province of

Antique through a formal letter. A written consent will be included before the

questionnaires stating the purpose and objectives of the study. The respondents can freely

decide whether to be a part of the study or not. To gain the respondents’ cooperation, the

researcher assured them that any information they provide be treated highly confidential

and will be used for the research purpose only. The research will not collect names or

other individual identifiers and there will be no data sets from individual respondents,

instead all results will be reported as grouped data.

Research Instrumentation

The quantitative protective nursing advocacy scale (PNAS) (appendix B) was

used to measure advocacy from the perspective of protecting patients in an acute care

environment. The PNAS tool was developed to measure advocacy from the beliefs and

actions of nurses protecting patients in the clinical setting. The tool consisted of 43-items
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(Table 3) scored on a five-point Likert scale ranging from (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly

disagree) for each question. The PNAS questionnaire consisted of the following four

nurse advocacy components: (a) acting as advocate, (b) work status and advocacy

actions, (c) environment and educational influences, and (d) support and barriers to

advocacy each component is reliable.

There were 16 items in the first component of the questionnaire that reflected

actions nurses took when acting as a patient advocate; actions of advocacy include

protecting vulnerable patients, acting on patients’ behalf, providing patients with

information, and ethical and legal requirements. The second components contain five

items that are labelled as possible consequences of advocating for patients in the work

setting, work status, advocacy actions. Eight items make up the third component of

environment and educational influences; these item measures the use of personal

knowledge, which included nurses’ confidence, personal values, and beliefs. Support and

barriers to advocacy is the fourth component and consists of influences that support

nurses to advocate; influence of physician support and work environment are examples of

external support for nurses.

Data Gathering Procedure

Prior to the conduct of the study, a letter will be sent to the administrative office of the

different hospitals by the researchers, requesting permission to administer the research

instrument. The permission by the chief nurse will be secured. The researchers will

introduce themselves to the staff nurses and explain the purpose of the study, and an

informed consent will be signed by the staff nurses prior to the participation in the study.

The instrument will be distributed personally to the staff nurses in their most convenient
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time. The respondents will be given enough time to finish answering the questionnaire.

The questionnaires will be retrieved and reviewed for completeness of data.

In the questionnaire, the consent form contains accountability of the researchers

that all responses in the questionnaire would remain anonymous and will be kept with

strict and confidentiality.

The questionnaires will be gathered after making sure that all the needed data are

filled in. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

(SPSS).

Data Processing and Statistical Analysis

After the data are collected, editing will be done by the researcher to see to it that

the responses to the different items are consistent, and to clarify errors or questionable

responses. Data will be categorized, coded and encoded for computer processing. A

coding manual will be prepared for this purpose.

The data will be processed according to indicators stipulated in the specific

objective of the study. The survey results were processed and analyzed using SPSS

Statistical Software.

The data will be analyzed using descriptive analysis. Descriptive statistic will be

used with frequency distribution and mean. The data collected will be manually sorted

out and analyzed using descriptive statistic and results will be presented in frequency,

percentages and mean and tables. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) will

be used.