| Course | PHLT 8064 Dissertation Seminar III |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 2 |
| Paper type | Purpose statement paper |
| Length | About 820 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | PhD in Public Health |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PHLT 8064 Week 2
A Purpose Statement That Makes Decisions: Rebuilding the Purpose of a Registry Study on Drive Time and Diagnostic Hearing Evaluation Until It Settles Population, Exposure, Outcome and Comparison
Student Name
Walden University
PHLT 8064: Dissertation Seminar III
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
A Purpose Statement That Makes Decisions: Rebuilding the Purpose of a Registry Study on Drive Time and Diagnostic Hearing Evaluation Until It Settles Population, Exposure, Outcome and Comparison
The Sentence as Revised
This study's purpose is to estimate, using a retrospective cohort drawn from a composite state's newborn hearing screening registry linked to birth certificates, the association between drive time from the residence at birth to the nearest pediatric diagnostic audiology site and documented diagnostic evaluation by three months of age among infants referred after a failed newborn hearing screen.
What the Sentence Hands to the Design
A design cannot decide on its own who belongs in a study, what the exposure is, what the outcome is or what is being compared. Those decisions belong to the purpose statement, and a statement that leaves them open forces the methods chapter to make them silently. Creswell and Creswell (2018) describe a quantitative purpose statement as one that names the variables, their relationship, the participants and the site, and the table below checks the sentence against that standard.
Table 1
Decisions the Purpose Statement Settles
| Decision | Words in the sentence that settle it | What the design inherits | |
|---|---|---|
| Who is included | "infants referred after a failed newborn hearing screen" in "a composite state's" registry | Every referred infant in the registry, not a sample of families | |
| What the exposure means | "drive time from the residence at birth to the nearest pediatric diagnostic audiology site" | A measured quantity for each infant, computed from an address recorded at birth | |
| What the outcome means | "documented diagnostic evaluation by three months of age" | A recorded event inside a fixed window, matching the national benchmark | |
| What comparison applies | "the association between" drive time and evaluation | Infants with longer drive times compared with infants with shorter ones | |
Note. The three-month diagnosis benchmark is the national goal (Joint Committee on Infant Hearing, 2019).
The Purpose It Replaced
Last term's purpose read: "to understand barriers to hearing follow-up among families of infants referred from newborn screening." Every word in it is reasonable, and it settled nothing. "Understand" does not say whether the answer is a number or an account. "Barriers" could mean distance, cost, work schedules, beliefs or clinic hours. "Hearing follow-up" could mean a scheduled appointment, an attended one or a completed diagnosis. "Families" points toward parents as the source of data, which my question does not need. That purpose named a topic. A committee reading it could have approved a survey, an interview study or a registry analysis, which means it had not yet chosen among them.
Why "Estimate"
The verb matters more than its length suggests. "Determine" implies that the study will establish whether distance causes missed evaluations, which a retrospective cohort without randomization cannot do on its own. "Explore" promises nothing measurable and would fit an interview study better than this one. "Estimate" fits what the design actually produces: an observational association, reported with a confidence interval, between drive time and documented evaluation. Hernán (2018) argues that researchers should not hide causal interest behind vague associational language, and the sentence does not do that. The study's interest is causal in the sense that a program could act on travel burden, but the verb stays honest about what one cohort can deliver. The analysis will adjust for confounders and report how strong unmeasured confounding would have to be to explain away the estimate, which keeps the causal question in view without overclaiming.
What "by Three Months" Adds
The window could have been left open, but an open outcome would let infants evaluated at eleven months count the same as those evaluated at six weeks. Fixing the window at three months ties the outcome to the national goal and to the period when early diagnosis has been linked to better language development (Yoshinaga-Itano et al., 1998). A secondary window at six months will be reported so readers can see whether long drives delay evaluation or prevent it.
The Three Sentences Together
Problem: In the composite state, about one in four infants who do not pass newborn hearing screening have no documented diagnostic evaluation by three months of age, and program staff suspect that travel to the state's five pediatric audiology sites is part of the reason, though no one has measured it.
Purpose: as boxed at the top of this document.
First research question: Among referred infants in the composite state, is longer drive time to the nearest pediatric diagnostic audiology site associated with lower odds of documented diagnostic evaluation by three months of age, after adjustment for infant and maternal characteristics?
Read together, the three sentences share a population, an exposure and an outcome, and each narrows the one above it. The problem names a gap, the purpose names the estimate that would fill it, and the question states what will be tested. If a later revision changes any one of them, the other two will need to change with it.
References
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE.
Hernán, M. A. (2018). The C-word: Scientific euphemisms do not improve causal inference from observational data. American Journal of Public Health, 108(5), 616-619. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304337
Joint Committee on Infant Hearing. (2019). Year 2019 position statement: Principles and guidelines for early hearing detection and intervention programs. Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention, 4(2), 1-44. https://doi.org/10.15142/fptk-b748
Yoshinaga-Itano, C., Sedey, A. L., Coulter, D. K., & Mehl, A. L. (1998). Language of early- and later-identified children with hearing loss. Pediatrics, 102(5), 1161-1171. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.102.5.1161
Reading the PHLT 8064 Week 2 instructions
Week 2 directs candidates to revise their purpose statement so it does work rather than announce a topic. A quantitative purpose is expected to name the variables, the relationship between them, the population and the setting, and to state the design and data source when the program template allows. Faculty also look at the verb, because it signals whether the study claims an association or a cause. Many students are asked to show the revision history, placing the earlier wording beside the new sentence and explaining each change. The submission is commonly two to four APA-formatted pages long and closes by checking the purpose against the problem statement and research questions, since all three must share one population, one exposure and one outcome. Sources on purpose statements and on causal language strengthen the explanation.
Inside the PHLT 8064 Week 2 example
The finished sentence sits at the top so every later paragraph can be checked against it. A section explains that population, exposure, outcome and comparison belong to the purpose rather than to the methods chapter, and Table 1 quotes the words that settle each one along with what the design inherits from them. The old purpose, "to understand barriers to hearing follow-up," is quoted next and taken apart word by word to show that it would have fit three different studies. A section on the verb weighs "determine," "explore" and "estimate" and cites Hernán on causal euphemisms, and a short subsection explains why the three-month window matters for language outcomes. The paper ends by aligning problem, purpose and first question so each narrows the one before it.
Where the marks sit in the PHLT 8064 Week 2 rubric
Walden rubrics for this deliverable reward a purpose statement that a committee could approve without asking clarifying questions. The heaviest weight falls on completeness: population, exposure, outcome, comparison and design all named. Credit also depends on the verb matching what an observational design can support, and the sample earns it by choosing "estimate" and explaining why. Showing the old wording beside the new earns marks for reflection, which several Walden seminars score as a separate row. Alignment with the problem and research question carries points of its own, so a purpose that drifts from the question loses them even when it reads well. A table that maps words to decisions makes the reasoning easy to grade. Scholarly support for each choice, accurate APA references and clean academic prose fill out the last rows.
PHLT 8064 Week 2 help from the desk
Purpose statements come back for revision most often because they name a topic instead of a study. Words like "understand," "barriers" and "follow-up" feel precise to an author who knows the field, but a committee reads them as undecided. A second problem is causal overreach, where "effect" or "impact" slips into a sentence describing registry data. Third, candidates sometimes revise the purpose without touching the problem statement or questions, and the three sentences stop matching. Read your sentence aloud and ask, for each phrase, which decision it settles; any phrase that settles nothing is either padding or a decision you have not made. Long sentences are fine if each clause earns its place. For a draft fitted to your own registry, survey or trial, the free custom sample offer here covers this week too.
Get a PHLT 8064 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send your current purpose statement, however vague, with the problem statement above it, plus the prompt and rubric posted for Week 2. It comes back rebuilt until every decision a design needs is named, the verb defended, and problem, purpose and question stacked for comparison. The first sample is free, delivered within 24 to 48 hours. The registry and the state it serves are composites.
More PHLT 8064 papers and PhD in Public Health samples
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PHLT 8064 Week 2 questions, answered
Should the design be named in the purpose statement?
In most quantitative dissertations, yes. Naming the design and the data source tells a reader immediately what kind of claim to expect and whether the study is feasible. The example names a retrospective cohort drawn from registry records linked to birth certificates. Some program templates place the design in a separate sentence; if yours does, keep the purpose sentence consistent with it.
Why is the verb so important?
Because it tells the committee what the study will claim. Determine and effect imply cause, which an observational registry study cannot establish without assumptions the purpose does not state. Explore and understand promise nothing a reader could check. Estimate, examine or describe fit most observational work. The example chose estimate because the study will report an association with a confidence interval, which is exactly an estimate.
Where can I find a free PHLT 8064 Week 2 sample paper?
The whole Week 2 purpose statement paper appears above, including the decision table, the discarded purpose from the prior term and the reasoning behind the verb. It follows one composite registry study of drive time and infant hearing evaluation, with APA references you can verify.
Can the purpose statement change after the proposal is approved?
Minor wording changes are common, but a change to the population, exposure, outcome or design usually needs committee approval because it changes the study. Keeping a dated record of each revision, as the sample does by quoting its earlier purpose, makes those conversations easier.
How many words should a purpose statement be?
Most quantitative purpose sentences land between 40 and 70 words. The sample's runs to about sixty because the population and exposure each need a qualifying phrase. Cutting it shorter would leave a decision open, while a much longer sentence often signals two purposes that should be separated.