Using online searches for building a database of potential study participants : analyzing the relationship between executive leaders' competencies and united states hospitals' value-based purchasing organizational performance

Author / Creator

Dishman, Lihua, author

Available as

Online

Summary

This case study shows researchers how to do online searchers for contact information of potential study participants. It is on the basis of a quantitative-qualitative sequential mixed-method study ...

This case study shows researchers how to do online searchers for contact information of potential study participants. It is on the basis of a quantitative-qualitative sequential mixed-method study that examined the relationship between hospital executives' leadership competencies and their hospitals' value-based purchasing (VBP) organizational performance, and explored the perceived impact of executive leadership competencies on VBP organizational performance. The study's two constructs were: (1) executive leadership competencies and (2) hospitals' VBP organizational performance. The chosen research topic and two study constructs required me to collect primary data from time-starved United States acute care hospital executives who were very difficult to recruit in normal times and more so during the global pandemic, and archival secondary data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and American Hospital Directory. Having anticipated potential challenges in primary data collection, my supervisor and I developed a data collection plan at the beginning of this large research project. As a part of this plan, I built a large database of potential study participants by doing online searches through hospital websites for contact information such as email addresses. Though cost efficient, this work required attentions to minute details and was very time consuming. The key to success was self-motivation, persistence, and willingness to spend countless hours doing mundane and tedious online searches. Building a database of 8,500 potential study participants enabled me to exceed my primary data collection goal and successfully complete the research study, which won my university's Dissertation of the Year Award in 2022.

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