Claiming our core: appraising qualitative evidence for nursing questions about human response and meaning.

The growing acceptance of evidence-based practice (EBP) principles in nursing raises the possibility that only question domains central to medical practice--therapy, harm, prognosis, and medical diagnosis--and "best evidence" appropriate to those domains will be valued. We propose incorporation of 2 additional question domains--human response and meaning--as particularly important for nursing practice, and we argue that the strongest evidence for these questions arises from qualitative research traditions. We discuss the evaluation and application of qualitative evidence for practice and identify unresolved issues for further discussion within the discipline.

Phenomenologies as research methodologies for nursing: from philosophy to researching practice.

This paper is concerned with the popularity of phenomenologies and the tensions that arise from their use as research methodologies in nursing. Among these tensions are: the troublesome issues of adapting a fundamentally philosophical means of understanding human being(s) for use as a more pragmatic and robust research approach in a practice discipline; the various types of phenomenology and the confusions that surround these and other interpretive methodologies, particularly within different intellectual and cultural traditions; and the need for nursing to find a space in which it can give voice to aspects of its practice that are silenced in less existentially oriented methodologies. Although phenomenologies are currently popular and possibly fashionable in nursing, there are important issues in relation to their use in a methodological sense that remain to be addressed.

[Grounded theory as an approach to interpretive research]. / A teoria fundamentada nos dados como abordagem da pesquisa interpretativa.

Interpretative research comprehends studies on qualitative methodology and inductive research. According to Lowenberg's classification (1994), grounded theory is a type of interpretative research situated as a variant of symbolic interaction. The purpose of the present study was to discuss grounded theory as a methodological reference, presenting it and indicating its method. The following stages were presented: collection of empirical data, proceedings of data codification or analysis; open coding, axial coding or concept modification and integration and theory delimitation. The studies of CALIRI (1994) and CASSIANI (1994) exemplified the utilization of this methodological reference. Finally, authors visualized grounded theory as an useful reference of analysis, providing means and orienting, through its stages, the researcher aiming at using it.

Interpretive research methodology: broadening the dialogue.

This article expands the dialogue on interpretive research methodology, locating this set of approaches within a broad historical and interdisciplinary context. Several of the most commonly held misconceptions in nursing, particularly those related to the meanings and derivations ascribed to "grounded theory," "symbolic interactionism," and "ethnography," are examined. The interpretive research approaches not only have gained broader acceptance across disciplines, but also have shifted in more radical and often less structured directions during the past decade. Several pivotal areas of these ongoing shifts are analyzed for their relevance to nursing research: the influence of critical and feminist theory and postmodernism, the ambiguity inherent in both every-day life and the research enterprise, the importance of locating the researcher, power and status inequities, the problematic aspects of language, meaning, and representation, and the emphasis on reflexivity and context as constitutive of meaning.