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‘As a lot of nursing is seen as hands-on, there can be a feeling of what’s research got to do with patients? But nursing is all about making informed decisions as accountable practitioners, using evidence, critical appraisal and critical thinking.’

Dr Charalambous has just redesigned a module for first-year nursing students, looking at evidence-based nursing practice. ‘I’ve tried to make it as simple and fun as possible,’ she says.

The intention is that by the end of the module, students understand the terminology and can critically appraise research papers, search databases and develop their own research questions.

‘All the fear has gone away and they realise they are more skilled than they were at the start,’ says Dr Charalambous. ‘In year three they write a dissertation, so they need to have these tools. Once you have these skills, you can use them throughout your studies.’

Nursing students can find research off-putting and dry, especially when they don’t understand the terminology, says Nadeem Khan, assistant professor of adult nursing at the University of Bradford. ‘But research is a big part of evidence-based practice, so it’s important,’ he says.

‘We want them to be able to challenge, and not accept things at face value. We also want them to be able to understand whether something looks like good evidence or not.’

Here, we explain some common research terms.

What is research?

Research is about systematically collecting and analysing data, says Dr Khan. ‘There are two key elements. There must be data collection and it has to try to fill a gap, either creating new knowledge or adding to the current body,’ he says.

‘It must be ethical, so you’re not just doing it for the sake of it but trying to improve things.’

What is a literature review?

‘This is the first stage of research,’ says Dr Khan. ‘It helps you find out what’s already been done and what’s out there. It can help you identify a gap and then your research study can try to fill it.’

There are at least ten kinds of review. Common examples include a scoping review, which gives a rough idea of what is currently available, and a systematic review which is more rigorous and structured.

What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Simply explained, qualitative is about words and quantitative is about numbers, says Dr Charalambous.

In qualitative research, the focus is on uncovering people’s experiences, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours by collecting and analysing non-numerical data, while quantitative data collects and analyses numerical data.

What is the difference between methodology and method?

‘People think they are the same, but they’re not,’ says Dr Khan. ‘It’s important to understand the difference otherwise you can mix things up. Methodology is the theoretical and philosophical foundation that we have as researchers.’

In practice methodology is either quantitative, qualitative or mixed method, which integrates both quantitative and qualitative in a single study. Each of these methodologies has their own methods, which are the tools used to collect and then analyse data.

For example, collecting data might involve focus groups or observation studies for qualitative research, or a questionnaire for quantitative research. The results are then analysed again using different methods.

What are keywords?

These words are closely related to your chosen research topic and their choice influences what you discover. ‘It’s useful to Google synonyms,’ suggests Dr Charalambous. ‘For example, if you’re researching something on mouth care, you could also look at oral hygiene. It’s about being creative.’

What are inclusion and exclusion criteria?

‘I use the example of baking a cake,’ says Dr Charalambous. ‘Are you going to put courgettes in it? If not, that’s your exclusion criteria. Are you going to put flour in it? Will it be gluten free? In practice, what you’re doing is refining your research question.’

What are Boolean operators?

These are techniques to refine keyword searches that can give more accurate results, sifting out anything irrelevant. These techniques can include adding words such as and, or and not, phrase searching, which puts terms into quotes, and truncating – for example nurs* will retrieve records with nurse, nurses and nursing in them.

What are randomised controlled trials?

This is a robust and rigorous type of quantitative research to test whether something works, which involves randomly assigning participants to either an experimental or control group.

‘They are very commonly used, especially in medicine,’ says Dr Khan.