Quantitative Studies

Word limit

Quantitative studies should not exceed 5000 words excluding the abstract, references, and tables.

Abstract (200 words)

Please organize your abstract under the following headings:

• Problem Statement

• Aims

• Design

• Methods

• Findings

• Relevance to health science theory/research/practice:

• Keywords

Main Document

The main document should be organized under the following headings:

Introduction: Use one short paragraph to briefly define your key variables, the research or knowledge gap, and the significance of your manuscript to address the gap.

Literature review: DO NOT use the heading literature review. Instead develop your own headings for this section to support your problem statement, research methods, or theoretical and methodological approaches. For example, if your manuscript focuses on designing implementation strategies to address health care professionals’ burnout out, use the headings: Conceptualization of Burnout, Limitations of Existing Strategies, Need for Designing Implementation Strategies, and so forth.

Methods

Under the methodology clearly mention the design, study setting, sample size estimation, sampling, sample characteristics, inclusion and exclusion criteria, data collection, recruitment strategies, data collection instruments, data analysis, and ethical considerations. Use the headings as per your preference; however, ensure that all of these components are adequately addressed. Please follow EQUATOR Checklists provided in the general guidelines to organize specific studies as per the research design.

Findings

Report your findings under relevant headings. Please do not repeat the information of tables in the findings and vice versa. Tables and Figures should be included within the manuscript at the designated section.

Discussion

Compare your research findings with national and international literature and outline areas for practice, research, and implications for practice and policymaking. The limitations should be included in this section as a separate paragraph. DO NOT repeat your research findings in this section.

Relevance to health science theory/research/practice

Choose one of the listed themes and present the contribution of your manuscript for global health care community.

Conclusions

Conclusions should not repeat the key findings. Instead focus on outlining the meaningful contribution of your manuscript and take-home messages for specialists and non-specialists.

Key Statistical Requirements

• Randomized controlled trials will be considered for peer review only if they have been registered. Unregistered RCTs are not published.

• Report sample size estimation and the formulas used. If online software was used, please provide a link and the name.

• For scale development papers, report the results of either Exploratory or Confirmatory Factor analysis or Both and content and face validity indexes for the scale.

• Report statistics up to two decimal points (e.g. 2.21).

• While reporting continuous data, report measures of dispersion along with measures of central tendency e.g., mean age: 27.50 ±6.40.

• While reporting qualitative (categorical) variables, report absolute frequency with percentage (%).

• Clearly report statistical methods applied to test hypothesis and assess objectives.

• Mention the name of the statistical software and package (if used) used to perform statistical analyses.

• For inferential statistics (e.g. T-tests, ANOVA), report both the exact p-values up to two significant digits and confidence intervals; for p-values of 0.00, report as p(0.01. For p-values very close to 1, report it as )0.97 rather than 1.00 unless the P-value is actually equal to 1.

• Whenever possible, provide exact data points rather than summarized data using bar charts, pie charts, and other graphs.

• Do not rank variables in terms of their strength of association based on the magnitude of their effect size.

Clearly describe the amount and nature of missing data and how the missing data were handled.