Statistics Used in Scholarly Projects of Doctor of Nursing Practice Graduates

Abstract

Background: Most of the DNP programs provide only one Biostatistics course for the students, which means instructors have limited time to prepare DNP students in mastering the statistics skills they need to complete their scholarly project. Methods: Quantitative content analysis was conduct on 100 DNP projects to retrieve information regarding the subjects, sample size, sampling strategies, and statistics methods used. These projects were selected from two online DNP projects repositories, where DNP graduates uploaded their projects voluntarily. Results: Almost half of the projects had a sample size less than 50, majority of the studies adopted convenience sampling strategy, and the most often used statistics methods discovered were descriptive analysis, t Test, and Chi square analysis. Conclusion: Small sample size is an intrinsic problem of most DNP projects. The results of this study give DNP students and faculty a more clear teaching map that focuses on skills used most often.