Conectar
Health research aims to improve people’s health by understanding the best ways to diagnose and treat conditions, and understand people’s responses to health problems and health promotion initiatives. Quantitative research, and more specifically randomised controlled trials (RCTs), aims to establish if an intervention works, for example testing the effectiveness of a new drug, using statistical analysis. In contrast, qualitative research focuses on understanding a situation, for example people’s experiences, perspectives and behaviours. Qualitative research can enhance RCTs by ensuring a more complete understanding of the factors that influence the acceptability of a new intervention and how it might be implemented in practice. A previous article in this series outlined how process evaluation embedded within RCTs can help understand how and why an intervention works.
Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a widely recognised and well-established method of qualitative inquiry designed to explore personal experience in detail, focusing on participants’ understandings and sense-making.
IPA was developed in the mid-1990s by Jonathan Smith and emerged out of health psychology, and since the early 2000s has increasingly been adopted by nursing and health researchers more generally. At the time of writing, a Google Scholar search of the terms ‘interpretative phenomenological analysis’ and ‘nursing’ yielded more than 35 000 results. IPA is primarily interested in undertaking...
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now widely accessible and already being used by healthcare researchers throughout various stages in the research process, such as assisting with systematic reviews, supporting data collection, facilitating data analysis and drafting manuscripts for publication.
There are several...
In the 10 years since this paper was originally published in EBN’s Research Made Simple series,
Assessing the quality of research is crucial to ensure findings can be effectively applied to clinical practice and are based on...
This article on realist reviews is the second in a four-part series on realist research.
Realist reviews (or realist evidence syntheses) are a theory-building, interpretative approach to evidence synthesis. Realist reviews aim to go beyond seeking whether interventions work (ie, are effective), to generating explanations as to...
This article is the first in a series exploring realist research, a methodological approach well suited to the complexity of nursing practice. Unlike traditional approaches such as randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews, which focus on whether interventions work, realist research examines how and why interventions work when implemented in specific groups; reflecting the individualised care nurses provide. By introducing the key concepts of realist research, this article highlights its relevance to nursing and lays the groundwork for using realist research to drive meaningful improvements in healthcare.
Realist research offers a unique lens to examine the complexity of healthcare delivery. While traditional research methods often seek to determine if interventions work or not in controlled environments, realist research seeks to explain how, why, for whom and under what circumstances interventions succeed—or fail—in real-world settings.
Critically evaluating the evidence, in particular research evidence, which underpins practice, is central to quality care and service improvements. Systematically appraising research includes assessing the rigour with which methods were undertaken and factors that may have biased findings. This article will outline what bias means in relation to research, why it is important to consider bias when appraising research and describe common types of bias across research processes. We will also offer strategies that researchers can undertake to minimise bias.
The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) describes bias in research as ‘systematic errors that can occur at any stage of the research process’ and can have a ‘significant impact on the reliability and validity of the findings’ that may lead to a distortion of the conclusions.
FreshRSS 