Frequently, if not weekly, I receive an email from a pharmacy faculty member, resident, or student who is conducting survey research and is requesting that I complete the survey, forward it to the appropriate faculty member to complete, or forward it to students. Scholarly inquiry is embedded in our educational outcomes for students and expectations for faculty members as described in Standards 2016.1 Standard 3.1 describes problem solving as “the graduate is able to identify problems; explore and prioritize potential strategies; and design, implement, and evaluate a viable solution.”1 In other words, learning how to apply the scientific method to solve everyday problems. Colleges and schools of pharmacy are expected to have a sufficient quantity of faculty members to conduct research and scholarly activity as a programmatic need, (standard 18.1) and provide an environment that requires and promotes scholarship (standard 19.2).1 In addition, the required competencies for pharmacy residents also address the importance of scholarship in residency training. Goal R2.2 states that postgraduate year one (PGY1) pharmacy residents should be able to “demonstrate ability to evaluate and investigate practice, review data, and assimilate scientific evidence to improve patient care and/or the medication-use system.”2 Without question, scholarly inquiry is the bedrock of higher education, and in particular, pharmacy education and training as we teach our students and residents to base patient-care decisions and system improvement initiatives on rigorous scientific evidence. However, I ask that we all consider the following before sending survey requests to all pharmacy school deans.
Meaningful Research Question
Is the research question meaningful and will it add to our understanding of natural or human phenomena? Has the question been answered previously in the literature? Will this study expand our understanding, or are the findings expected to replicate previous findings? This is particularly important for faculty members who are mentoring student and resident researchers. There is no doubt that novices learn from participating in research projects. A study published 10 years ago indicated that most colleges of pharmacy required students to complete coursework in biostatistics and drug information/literature review, about 50% required research methods coursework, and about 25% required a research project.3 In addition, the number of residency programs have increased over the years, and residents are expected to complete research projects as part of their training, some with the expectations of publication. Pharmacy education has embraced the value of teaching and practicing research skills.
However, some individuals in the scientific community are calling for a “stop the deluge of science research” and question the quality and the merit of some research and publications.4,5 Bauerlein and colleagues state, “While brilliant and progressive research continues apace here and there, the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in recent decades, filling countless pages in journals and monographs.”5 Perhaps a different strategy for students and residents could be to develop the research design, complete with background, aims, methods, and omit data collection and analysis. Novices could learn data analysis by using data sets from previous studies. In fact, the recently updated PGY1 residency competencies recognize that all of the steps to become proficient in the research process, while ideally related to the same project from start to finish, could be developed through working on multiple initiatives or projects at different stages in the research process.2 Developing a meaningful research question cannot be taken lightly, and we may only be able to truly instill in students and residents this by ensuring their proficiency in the earlier stages of the research process before asking them to engage in the later stages.
METHODS
Once you have established that your research question adds value to our understanding, consider the methods. Is a survey the best way to collect your data? The answer to questions, particularly curriculum questions, may be found on school web pages. Perhaps a content analysis is a more appropriate method to collect data. Is a focus group a better way to collect data and provide the investigators the opportunity to probe more deeply into phenomena? Rather than administer a survey that may result in a response rate of 15% or less, consider an alternate method using qualitative methods such as interviews or focus groups. The American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education has published a series of papers on survey research standards, and have embedded those standards in the instruction to authors6-10 While there has been discussion questioning the Journal’s expectation for response rate,11 regardless, investigators naturally want the highest response rate possible to strengthen the generalizability of their findings. A low response rate may result in non-responder bias. In other words, those who completed the survey are inherently different than those individuals who did not complete the survey. If so, then what do these results really mean? Consider this carefully prior to your decision to survey every college of pharmacy, every pharmacy faculty member, or every student.
If your research question is novel and you have determined that a survey is the best way to collect data, then ask yourself: do I need to survey all pharmacy schools, faculty members, or students, or is a sample sufficient? Would a carefully selected sample, with champions at those schools to encourage responses, yield a higher response rate and provide data that can answer your research question? Consider the expected variation in your responses and the size of the total population and discuss sampling techniques with others who have expertise in this area. In addition, there are numerous survey sample size calculators available online.
High quality survey research is complex and should not be taken lightly. Given our current environment of endless satisfaction surveys from hotels, restaurants, airlines, health care organizations, financial institutions, car dealers among many others, we need to fight the urge to follow the trend and automatically respond with “let’s do a survey!” every time we seek to answer a research question.
- Received October 3, 2017.
- Accepted November 15, 2017.
- © 2017 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
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