Nursing 502 Methods of Advanced Research
Research Poster Assignment Instructions
Research critique – poster collaboration
This assignment is designed to evaluate the student’s ability to identify a problem significant to nursing, select nursing research literature that addresses the problem, critique the literature, and make recommendations as to how research findings might be integrated into nursing practice to improve the problem. The assignment emphasizes evidence-based practice.
Instead of writing a research paper, students will design and present their evidence-based project using a scientific poster format. This is a professional way to share information and it is the desire of the faculty to build opportunities within the learning community for students to share and present their work in meaningful ways.
The general format of the poster should introduce the problem and its significance to nursing, highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each research study, and summarize how this small body of research can be used to improve nursing practice (solving the original problem). There are many online sites for poster development, such as www.makesigns.com . Click on scientific research posters, then poster templates; choose the color and size, then download to your computer. The poster can be easily created and saved as a PowerPoint slide. Using this format, students can have a professional poster made through a website like www.makesigns.com, or at a print shop. The poster for this course does not need to be printed. The project will be graded using the following rubric:
Evidence-based Poster Rubric
Poster Title:
Author(s):
| Category | Scoring criteria | Points | Score |
| Content | Introduction clearly describes the importance of the topic for nursing practice. | 10 | |
| Summary of research study – each study is clearly summarized to include the research question, design, sample, and findings. | 25 | ||
| Critique of research study – each study is briefly critiqued for strengths and weaknesses. | 25 | ||
| Practice guidelines are provided that represent the important findings from each research study. | 15 | ||
| References are written in appropriate APA style. | 5 | ||
| All research articles submitted.
|
5 | ||
| Presentation | Title of Poster, names of authors, and University are clearly presented. | 5 | |
| Artistic elements, such as color and graphics, are professional and visually attractive. | 5 | ||
| Sequence of the presentation is easy to follow. Sentence structure is clear, with no spelling errors. | 5 | ||
| Total |
100 |
General guidelines for evidence-based poster.
Problem statement and purpose – introduce the clinical problem and its significance to nursing practice. Convince the reader of the significance of the problem to nursing. The purpose of the project is to critique the literature on that topic and to recommend evidence-based practice guidelines. The method is to search the nursing literature, critique nursing research on the topic, and report best practices.
Literature review – find articles
Students will critique at least four relevant nursing research articles on the topic.
Articles must be current, written by nurses and published in a quality nursing research
journal, with any exceptions approved by the instructor
Research studies conducted outside the US should not be utilized.
For each article, write two paragraphs: one that summarizes the research and another paragraph that summarizes the strengths and the weaknesses of the research.
Recommend practice guidelines – describe how the nurse could use the findings in each study to improve practice. For each study, the student should describe at least one practice guideline that might improve a patient outcome (solve the original problem). Be specific about how you would use findings from each of these studies to improve the clinical practice problem. This is a critical part of the assignment. Utilization of research findings is essential to professional nursing practice. Remember: If the research has too many weaknesses, you may not want to recommend using the findings without further investigation. Consider at least one bulleted item on the poster for each critiqued study.
APA – this assignment is not heavy on APA style but it is expected that references will be correctly cited.
Students will submit an electronic copy of each research article and poster for grading purposes. For students working in a group, one student should be responsible for submitting the poster and the articles for the group.
