| Course | RES 6512 Research Concept Paper |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 1 |
| Paper type | Alignment table and problem statement |
| Length | 1,220 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | Ed.D. and DBA doctoral core |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for RES 6512 Module 1
When the Debrief Ends Too Soon: An Alignment Table and Problem Statement for a Study of Simulation Debriefing and Clinical Judgment in an Associate Degree Nursing Program
Student Name
American College of Education
RES6512: Research Concept Paper
Module 1 Assignment
Instructor Name
October 12, 2026
Introduction
I coordinate the simulation center for a two-campus associate degree nursing program at a public community college in Arizona. Each semester our students run high-fidelity scenarios, and each scenario ends with a debriefing that, in practice, depends on whichever faculty member is in the room. Some debriefings last forty minutes and ask students to explain their reasoning; others last ten and review what went wrong. That inconsistency is the seed of my dissertation. This paper drafts the problem statement for the study and builds the alignment table that will hold the concept paper together, so that every later choice can be checked against the problem it is meant to address.
The Practice Concern
The RN licensing exam has tested clinical judgment head-on since the spring of 2023, with case-based items drawn from the regulator's own measurement model (Dickison et al., 2019). Programs have responded by adding judgment-focused case studies to their courses, but the place where many students first practice judgment under pressure is simulation. The evidence on simulation itself is encouraging: in a national randomized study, students who spent as much as half their clinical time in simulation instead of on units did as well as those with conventional placements, under conditions that included trained faculty and a theory-based debriefing method (Hayden et al., 2014). Whether our program meets that condition is uncertain, because no single debriefing method is required and faculty preparation for debriefing varies.
Evidence That the Problem Is Real
Two kinds of evidence support a problem statement here. The first concerns graduates. In an analysis of competency assessments completed by newly hired nurses, fewer than one in four met the entry-level expectation for clinical reasoning (Kavanagh & Szweda, 2017). Those data come from hospital orientation programs rather than from associate degree graduates alone, so they show a national pattern rather than a local one. The second concerns debriefing. Students who went through Debriefing for Meaningful Learning, an approach in which the facilitator keeps asking learners to say aloud why they acted as they did, showed larger gains in clinical reasoning than students who received usual debriefing (Dreifuerst, 2012), and a multisite study reported a similar advantage (Forneris et al., 2015). Neither study measured clinical judgment as rated in performance, and neither was set in an associate degree program in the Southwest. Locally, our faculty survey from last spring found that debriefing length and structure differed widely by instructor. Of the fourteen faculty who responded, five reported using a named debriefing framework, the rest described their own approach, and reported debriefing times ranged from eight to forty-five minutes for the same scenario. Only three had completed formal debriefing training.
Draft Problem Statement
The problem is that associate degree nursing students at a two-campus Arizona community college are debriefed after simulation without a consistent, theory-based method, and it is not known whether a structured approach such as Debriefing for Meaningful Learning would improve their clinical judgment as observed in performance. The statement has four parts. It names a specific population and setting. It states a current condition that can be documented, the inconsistent debriefing. It identifies a consequence that matters to the field, clinical judgment, which the licensure examination now measures. And it closes on what is unknown, which is the gap a study can address. The statement avoids blaming faculty, avoids presuming the answer and does not name the method of the study, which belongs in later sections.
Who Would Use the Answer
A problem is worth a dissertation only if someone can act on the answer. Three groups could. Our nursing faculty would learn whether adopting one debriefing method, with the training it requires, is worth the time it takes from content review and skills practice. Program leaders across the state's community college system, several of whom share simulation equipment and faculty development funds, would have local evidence rather than findings from university programs to guide their own choices. And the students themselves have the most at stake: associate degree graduates make up a large share of new nurses in rural Arizona hospitals, where an inexperienced nurse may have fewer senior colleagues nearby to catch a missed cue. A result in either direction would be useful. If structured debriefing improves observed judgment, the program has reason to require it; if it does not, faculty time can go elsewhere.
The Alignment Table
Table 1 in the concept paper has eight rows, each one a component of the study, and a column showing how that component answers to the problem.
Problem: inconsistent, non-theory-based debriefing; unknown effect of a structured method on observed clinical judgment. Purpose: to compare the clinical judgment of students debriefed with Debriefing for Meaningful Learning with that of students receiving the program's usual debriefing. Research questions: whether total clinical judgment scores differ between the two groups after adjusting for an early-semester baseline, and whether differences appear in each of the rubric's four dimensions. Framework: the clinical judgment model Tanner (2006) described, whose noticing, interpreting, responding and reflecting are exactly the phases the debriefing method works on. Design: quantitative, quasi-experimental, nonequivalent comparison groups. Population and sample: second-year associate degree students in a medical-surgical course across two consecutive semesters. Instrument: the Lasater Clinical Judgment Rubric, which was built on Tanner's model (Lasater, 2007). Analysis: analysis of covariance with the baseline score as the covariate.
Testing the Alignment
I tested the table by reading each row against the problem statement and asking whether a reader could predict the next row from the one before. Two weaknesses surfaced. My first purpose statement promised to explore students' experience of debriefing, which a quasi-experimental design cannot answer; I removed it and kept the purpose comparative. My first instrument choice was a standardized critical thinking test, but the problem concerns judgment observed in performance, so the rubric fits better. The framework and the instrument now share the same four phases, which means the theory, the intervention and the measure speak one vocabulary. A third check concerned feasibility: two semesters of students should provide enough participants, a question the methodology module will settle with a power analysis.
Decisions Still Open
Three decisions remain for later modules. The first is whether to train the comparison group's faculty in a second structured method, which would turn the study into a comparison of methods rather than of structure, or to leave usual practice as it is, which mirrors the real choice our program faces. The second is how to blind raters, who will score video recordings of a final simulation, so that they cannot tell which group a student belongs to. The third is whether a secondary outcome, such as performance on judgment-focused practice items, adds enough to justify the extra data collection. Recording these questions now keeps them from being settled by default.
Conclusion
The draft problem statement names a setting, a documented condition, a consequence and an unknown. The alignment table carries those terms through purpose, questions, framework, design, sample, instrument and analysis, and testing it removed one misaligned purpose and one poorly fitting instrument. Module 2 will refine the purpose statement and write the research questions and hypotheses in final form.
References
Dickison, P., Haerling, K. A., & Lasater, K. (2019). Integrating the National Council of State Boards of Nursing Clinical Judgment Model into nursing educational frameworks. Journal of Nursing Education, 58(2), 72-78. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20190122-03
Dreifuerst, K. T. (2012). Using debriefing for meaningful learning to foster development of clinical reasoning in simulation. Journal of Nursing Education, 51(6), 326-333. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20120409-02
Forneris, S. G., Neal, D. O., Tiffany, J., Kuehn, M. B., Meyer, H. M., Blazovich, L. M., Holland, A. E., & Smerillo, M. (2015). Enhancing clinical reasoning through simulation debriefing: A multisite study. Nursing Education Perspectives, 36(5), 304-310. https://doi.org/10.5480/15-1672
Hayden, J. K., Smiley, R. A., Alexander, M., Kardong-Edgren, S., & Jeffries, P. R. (2014). The NCSBN National Simulation Study: A longitudinal, randomized, controlled study replacing clinical hours with simulation in prelicensure nursing education. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 5(2), S3-S40. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256(15)30062-4
Kavanagh, J. M., & Szweda, C. (2017). A crisis in competency: The strategic and ethical imperative to assessing new graduate nurses' clinical reasoning. Nursing Education Perspectives, 38(2), 57-62. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000112
Lasater, K. (2007). Clinical judgment development: Using simulation to create an assessment rubric. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(11), 496-503. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20071101-04
Tanner, C. A. (2006). Thinking like a nurse: A research-based model of clinical judgment in nursing. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(6), 204-211. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20060601-04
RES 6512 Module 1 instructions, in plain terms
The concept paper course begins by asking you to pin the problem down. Prompts in RES 6512's first module generally call for a problem statement of a paragraph or two, supported by current, cited evidence, and an alignment table that shows how the rest of the planned study answers to it. Expect the table to include purpose, research questions, framework, design, population, instrumentation and analysis, even if some rows are still tentative. Faculty read this module for focus: one problem, one population, one gap. Write the problem in your own professional setting but support it with literature beyond that setting, and avoid naming your method inside the problem statement itself.
How this RES 6512 Module 1 example is built
The paper moves from the writer's practice concern to the evidence and then to the statement itself. A short account of the licensure examination's shift toward clinical judgment and the national simulation study sets the stakes. Evidence follows in two strands, new graduate reasoning and structured debriefing, each with its limits stated. The problem statement is printed as one sentence and taken apart clause by clause. Eight alignment rows are then described in prose, each tied back to the problem's terms. A testing section reports two revisions made because rows did not follow from one another, and a short section lists decisions still open so later modules can settle them on purpose.
Reading the RES 6512 Module 1 rubric
Rubrics for the concept paper's opening module reward focus and documentation above all. A problem statement scores well when it identifies a specific population, describes a current condition supported by recent scholarly evidence, explains the consequence and states what remains unknown. The alignment table is judged on completeness and internal consistency, so a purpose that the design cannot answer or an instrument that measures something other than the outcome will cost points. Graders also look for scholarly voice, accurate APA 7 citations and evidence that the student has thought about feasibility. Showing your own revisions, as this sample does, demonstrates the critical stance faculty hope to see before candidacy.
Common RES 6512 Module 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Many doctoral students find the problem statement the hardest page of the whole dissertation, because it must be narrow and well documented at once. If your committee keeps calling your problem too broad, or your alignment table has rows that do not quite match, our writers can work with your topic and setting. Send your current draft, any local data you have and the module instructions, and we will return a revised problem statement and a completed alignment table with notes on every change. We support Ed.D. candidates in nursing and public health education as well as DBA students. Getting this page right early saves time in every later chapter.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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RES 6512 Module 1 questions, answered
What does RES6512 Module 1 usually ask for?
Most sections open the concept paper course by asking for a draft problem statement and an alignment table that links the problem to the purpose, questions, framework, design, sample, instrument and analysis.
What makes a dissertation problem statement strong?
It names one population and setting, documents a current condition with recent evidence, explains why the condition matters and ends with what is not yet known, without presuming the answer.
What goes in a dissertation alignment table?
One row per component of the study, from the problem through purpose, research questions, framework, design, population, instruments and analysis, so a reader can see that each follows from the last.
Where can I find a free RES 6512 Module 1 sample paper?
Read this one: a community college simulation coordinator writes a four-part problem statement on debriefing and clinical judgment, then tests an eight-row alignment table against it.
Can local data support a problem statement?
Yes, alongside published evidence. Local data show the problem exists in your setting, while recent studies show it matters beyond one program and that the question is still open.