NURS 520: Quantitative Methods in Nursing Research

NoodleTools Assignment

NoodleTools is a citation service that allows you to keep track of sources, organize them and use them in outlines and notecards, and generate citations in the correct format.  One of the assignments in this course is to create and use a NoodleTools account.  While you're not required to continue using it in future courses, it's helpful for you to get experience with a tool like this and decide if it would be useful in the future.

Setting Up Your Account

1. Go to our NoodleTools page and click the banner/image or link to the NoodleTools site.  (Don't Google NoodleTools to get there that way, because the site needs to recognize that you're affiliated with Stevenson.)
    
2. Click the Register link to sign up for an account.  You can use your SU username and password if you want, but keep in mind that this account will be separate from your regular SU single sign-on username and password.

Creating Sources and References

1. Once you're signed into your new account, click the green "New Project" button to start a new project.  Give your project a name (e.g., NURS 520 Literature Review) and choose APA as the citation style and Advanced as the level.
    
2. Click the green "New Source" button to add a source that you've found and would like to use in your project.
    
3. When you create a new citation, you will be prompted to select where the source is and what type it is.
    
4. Once you select what the source is, a new citation form will appear in the next screen:
5. On the form, fill in as many details about your source as possible. Help text pops up with tips as you move from field to field.
    
6. A guide at the top-right of the screen displays a formatting template. Click the blue tab (APA Guide in the screenshot below) to open the guide. As you enter information in the form, the corresponding element is highlighted in the template.
    
7. Some databases allow you to export information about sources directly to NoodleTools, which is convenient because you don't have to type or copy and paste the information.
    
8. Once you've saved your source in NoodleTools, you can take notes on it, organize it in an outline, or generate in-text citations and a reference list entry for it.

Assignment - Brainstorm topics

By the end of this course you will be writing a literature review and a research proposal on a topic of your choosing. The topic you choose now should address a question that ought to be answerable by quantitative research. As you brainstorm topics, delve into the literature to see how well your topic is covered. Based on your preliminary review of the literature, broaden or narrow your topic accordingly to make it focused and manageable. You may get some ideas for new or more manageable topics. 

Delving into the literature means becoming familiar with the tools used for nursing research. It also means reading background information found in journals, magazines and books. "Going to the literature" is something that is done throughout the research process, and exploring your topic broadly is where research begins.

Brainstorm topics that reflect your clinical experience, but are also related to the reading you are doing. Look for a review article that sums up the research in your area of interest. For your literature review, the articles should be primary research, but at this exploratory stage anything that sparks ideas is useful. Go to the Finding Quantitative Research page to see suggested databases.

When you have decided on a preliminary topic, write your topic sentence.