Publishing Workshops: Number 2, Preparing a Manuscript – Reporting Quantitative Research Findings

In Workshop 1 – Preparing Manuscripts for Publication – we outlined four different types of papers commonly found in nursing journals:  papers that report research findings, more theoretical works, literature reviews, and clinical pieces.  Within the first grouping, we differentiated between research articles reporting the findings of quantitative research, and those focusing on qualitative work.  There were several reasons for this differentiation.  Apart from obvious differences related to the research processes employed in each type, the principal distinction is the ready availability of conventions and language to guide manuscript production for reporting quantitative research, versus the paucity of guidelines to assist those reporting qualitative approaches.  Consequently, this present paper, focusing on quantitative methods, will probably be the shortest, most straightforward, and least contentious within this series.