TY - JOUR
T1 - The need for a definition of big data for nursing science
T2 - A case study of disaster preparedness
AU - Wong, Ho Ting
AU - Chiang, Vico Chung Lim
AU - Choi, Kup Sze
AU - Loke, Alice Yuen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 by the author; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2016/10
Y1 - 2016/10
N2 - The rapid development of technology has made enormous volumes of data available and achievable anytime and anywhere around the world. Data scientists call this change a data era and have introduced the term “Big Data”, which has drawn the attention of nursing scholars. Nevertheless, the concept of Big Data is quite fuzzy and there is no agreement on its definition among researchers of different disciplines. Without a clear consensus on this issue, nursing scholars who are relatively new to the concept may consider Big Data to be merely a dataset of a bigger size. Having a suitable definition for nurse researchers in their context of research and practice is essential for the advancement of nursing research. In view of the need for a better understanding on what Big Data is, the aim in this paper is to explore and discuss the concept. Furthermore, an example of a Big Data research study on disaster nursing preparedness involving six million patient records is used for discussion. The example demonstrates that a Big Data analysis can be conducted from many more perspectives than would be possible in traditional sampling, and is superior to traditional sampling. Experience gained from the process of using Big Data in this study will shed light on future opportunities for conducting evidence-based nursing research to achieve competence in disaster nursing.
AB - The rapid development of technology has made enormous volumes of data available and achievable anytime and anywhere around the world. Data scientists call this change a data era and have introduced the term “Big Data”, which has drawn the attention of nursing scholars. Nevertheless, the concept of Big Data is quite fuzzy and there is no agreement on its definition among researchers of different disciplines. Without a clear consensus on this issue, nursing scholars who are relatively new to the concept may consider Big Data to be merely a dataset of a bigger size. Having a suitable definition for nurse researchers in their context of research and practice is essential for the advancement of nursing research. In view of the need for a better understanding on what Big Data is, the aim in this paper is to explore and discuss the concept. Furthermore, an example of a Big Data research study on disaster nursing preparedness involving six million patient records is used for discussion. The example demonstrates that a Big Data analysis can be conducted from many more perspectives than would be possible in traditional sampling, and is superior to traditional sampling. Experience gained from the process of using Big Data in this study will shed light on future opportunities for conducting evidence-based nursing research to achieve competence in disaster nursing.
KW - Big data
KW - Disaster preparedness
KW - Research method
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U2 - 10.3390/ijerph13101015
DO - 10.3390/ijerph13101015
M3 - Review article
C2 - 27763525
AN - SCOPUS:84991694214
SN - 1661-7827
VL - 13
JO - International journal of environmental research and public health
JF - International journal of environmental research and public health
IS - 10
M1 - 1015
ER -