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Margarete Sandelowski

Publications and source records attributed to Margarete Sandelowski.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Tenerlos en la Casa: the material world and craft of family caregiving for relatives with dementia.

The environment has been found to be critical to the well-being of patients with dementia. The purpose of this study was to describe strategies Colombian caregivers used in the home to manage the care of relatives with dementia. Grounded theory techniques were used. Interviews were conducted in Medellín, Colombia, with 18 primary caregivers and 2 health care professionals. Participant observations were conducted in caregivers' support groups and homes. Family caregivers rebuilt the environment as the disease progressed to accommodate caregiving and preserve family life. Caring for a relative with dementia is a craft that transforms the material world in which patient and caregiver live. The findings show the value of place-sensitive approaches to the study and practice of caregiving.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Types of social support in African Americans with cancer.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To determine the types of social support that African Americans use to cope with the experience of cancer. RESEARCH APPROACH: Qualitative study using a grounded theory approach. SETTING: Participants' homes in the southeastern United States. PARTICIPANTS: A purposeful sample of 13 African American men (aged 61-79 years) treated for prostate cancer and 15 African American women (aged 42-87 years) treated for breast cancer. Participants were selected according to key variables known to influence social support: age, gender, marital status, education, geographic region, and proximity to family. METHODOLOGIC APPROACH: Open-ended and semistructured interviews were conducted with each participant (N = 28). Participants were interviewed until informational redundancy was achieved. Constant comparison techniques were used to identify variations of social support within and across cases. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: The experience of social support during diagnosis or treatment for cancer as well as post-treatment. FINDINGS: Participants used types of social support not currently emphasized in the literature. The emotional support of "presence" was reported most frequently. Instrumental support included not only current conceptualizations but also offers of prayers, assistance to continue religious practices, and assistance to maintain social roles. Informational support included what to expect and how to manage symptoms, interpret information, and validate information received. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest the need to reconceptualize social support for African Americans with cancer and to refine instruments to include these different manifestations of social support. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: Researchers can use these findings in the design of culturally relevant questionnaires and interventions for this population. Clinicians can use knowledge of the types of social support valued among African American patients with cancer to develop more appropriate strategies to promote healthy outcomes for this population.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Stigma in HIV-positive women.

PURPOSE: To present a metasynthesis of qualitative findings on stigma in HIV-positive women. METHOD: Metasummary and metasynthesis techniques were used to integrate findings on stigma in 93 reports of qualitative studies conducted between 1991 and 2002 with a total of 1,780 women, mostly from minority groups. FINDINGS: Both perceived and enacted stigma were pervasive in the lives of HIV-positive women. HIV-related stigma was intensified in women because they were women. Stigma management largely involved efforts to control information in the service of preserving social relations and maintaining moral identity. DISCUSSION: This metasynthesis reprises and clarifies the connections between recurring themes in primary quantitative studies and metastudies of HIV-positive people and of stigmatizing diseases and conditions. This work also shows how affected people's location on key axes of difference can both facilitate and complicate efforts to manage stigma. CONCLUSIONS: HIV-positive women experience stigmatization in relationships with others. HIV-related stigma is as much a reflection of these others as it is central to the experience of HIV-positive people themselves. Even those not infected with HIV are still affected by it and are thus appropriate targets for interventions to reduce its negative effects.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Using qualitative research.

A renewed urgency has emerged in the qualitative health research community concerning the utility of qualitative research. This urgency is the result of several converging trends in health care research, including the elevation of practical over basic knowledge, proliferation of qualitative health research studies, and the rise of evidence-based practice as a paradigm and methodology for health care. Diverse conceptualizations of use and users exist, and these have different implications for understanding, demonstrating, and enhancing the utility of qualitative research findings. Issues affecting the utilization of these findings include the varied ways in which they are conceived, presented, synthesized, signified, and translated, and the complex repertoire of skills required to activate the knowledge transformation cycle in qualitative health research fully.

Evidence-Based Medicine↗
PubMed2004

Qualitative metasynthesis: reflections on methodological orientation and ideological agenda.

In an era of pressure toward evidence-based health care, we are witnessing a new enthusiasm for qualitative metasynthesis as an enterprise distinct from conventional literature reviews, secondary analyses, and the many other scholarly endeavors with which it is sometimes confused. This article represents the reflections of five scholars, each ofwhom has authored a distinct qualitative metasynthesis strategy. By providing the reader a glimpse into the tradition of their various qualitative metasynthesis projects, these authors offer a finely nuanced examination of the tensions between comparison and integration, deconstruction and synthesis, and reporting and integration within the metasynthesis endeavor. In so doing, they account for many of the current confusions about representation and generalization within the products of these inquiries. Through understanding the bases of their unique angles of vision, the reader is invited to engage in their commitment to scholarly integrity and intellectual credibility in this emerging methodological challenge.

Humans↗
PubMed2003

Toward a metasynthesis of qualitative findings on motherhood in HIV-positive women.

A qualitative metasynthesis of qualitative findings ought to be more than a mere summary of those findings. Yet the processes by which the interpretive innovation expected of qualitative metasynthesis projects can be achieved remain opaque. Several analytic devices for the metasynthesis of findings were clarified in the course of an ongoing methodological project involving 45 reports of qualitative studies of HIV-positive women. These devices include the creation of a taxonomy of findings, the explicit use of sustained comparisons, the translation of in vivo concepts, and the use of imported concepts. Any qualitative metasynthesis of findings constitutes an interpretation at least three times removed from the lives represented in them. Clarifying the analytic devices used to create such metasyntheses is essential to demonstrating that despite being far away from participants' lives, these interpretations remain close to them.

Female↗
PubMed2003

Motherhood in the context of maternal HIV infection.

Metasummary and metasynthesis techniques were used to integrate findings pertaining to motherhood in 56 reports of qualitative studies conducted with HIV-positive women. Motherhood in the context of maternal HIV infection entailed work directed toward the illness itself and the social consequences of having HIV infection in the service of two primary goals: the protection of children from HIV infection and HIV-related stigma and the preservation of a positive maternal identity. Motherhood both intensified and mitigated the negative physical and social effects of HIV infection. HIV-positive mothers engaged in a distinctive kind of maternal practice-virtual motherhood-to resist forces that disrupted their relationships with and ability to care for their children, as well as their identities as mothers.

Chronic Disease↗
PubMed2003

The challenges of searching for and retrieving qualitative studies.

The authors' purpose in this article is to report the results of their search and retrieval efforts to date in an ongoing study to develop the procedural, analytic, and interpretive techniques to conduct qualitative meta-synthesis projects, using studies on women with HIV infection as the method case. For researchers conducting qualitative meta-synthesis projects, the ideal goal is to retrieve all of the relevant studies in a field--not simply a sample of them. Bates's model of berrypicking is used as the framework to describe the techniques used to conduct these searches. The authors discuss, in particular, the challenges of working with bibliographic databases, including choosing which databases to search, learning about the idiosyncrasies of working with each database, developing a list of search terms, and refining inclusion criteria regarding which studies to include in the meta-synthesis. Recommendations are given for searchers and writers of qualitative research.

Databases, Factual↗
PubMed2003

Living the golden rule: reciprocal exchanges among African Americans with cancer.

Giving is receiving, and receiving is giving. This is the key finding from interviews conducted with 28 African American women and men with cancer who were active participants in dynamic relationships characterized by both giving and receiving. These participants engaged in reciprocal relationships varying in the number of persons involved, types of resources exchanged, and timing of exchange. Findings suggest the need to reconceptualize social support as caregiving and caregiving as social support. This study also points to the need to redesign intervention studies to be more inclusive of components that allow the elderly in illness-related situations to maintain their status as givers in their social networks.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2003

Writing the proposal for a qualitative research methodology project.

Writing the proposal for a qualitative research methodology study is a double challenge because of the emergent nature of qualitative research design and because a methodology study entails describing a process to produce a process. How the authors addressed this challenge is shown in the annotated text of the grant proposal--"Analytic Techniques for Qualitative Metasynthesis"--funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research. Appealing qualitative research proposals adhere to principles that engage writers and readers in an informative and mutually respectful interaction.

Clinical Protocols↗
PubMed2003

Classifying the findings in qualitative studies.

A key task in conducting research integration studies is determining what features to account for in the research reports eligible for inclusion. In the course of a methodological project, the authors found a remarkable uniformity in the way findings were produced and presented, no matter what the stated or implied frame of reference or method. They describe a typology of findings, which they developed to bypass the discrepancy between method claims and the actual use of methods, and efforts to ascertain its utility and reliability. The authors propose that the findings in journal reports of qualitative studies in the health domain can be classified on a continuum of data transformation as no finding, topical survey, thematic survey, conceptual/thematic description, or interpretive explanation.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗
PubMed2002

Visible humans, vanishing bodies, and virtual nursing: complications of life, presence, place, and identity.

The emergence of the posthuman body and the disappearance of the humanist body serve as background for the rediscovery of the body as resource and problem in nursing. At the precise moment when the fleshy body is deemed increasingly irrelevant and immaterial in cyberspace come divergent moves in nursing toward not only resurrecting this body, but also toward virtual environments of nursing care, where fleshy bodies never encounter each other. The posthuman conflation of bodies and information poses the greatest challenge yet to the secure place, presence, and identity of nursing in health care.

Anatomy, Cross-Sectional↗
PubMed2002

Finding the findings in qualitative studies.

PURPOSE: To describe the challenges of finding the findings in qualitative studies. METHOD: Review of literature on representation in qualitative research and analysis of 99 reports of qualitative studies of women with HIV infection. FINDINGS: Factors complicating finding the findings in qualitative studies include varied reporting styles, misrepresentation of data and analytic procedures as findings, misuse of quotes and theory, and lack of clarity concerning pattern and theme. Theses and dissertations present special challenges because they often contain several of these problems. CONCLUSIONS: Given the varied beliefs about findings among qualitative researchers, the challenge is to find ways to present findings that will make them discernible to the diverse audiences for whom they are intended, including researchers and practitioners.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗
PubMed2002

Reembodying qualitative inquiry.

Although there are four large categories of research data, qualitative researchers have tended to emphasize interview data. Naive views of the interview, disembodied views of participant observation, and a virtual neglect of the material world have led to qualitative work that is not as full-bodied as it should be. Survey and qualitative researchers often share the realist's assumption that interview responses index some external reality of facts and feelings, respectively. The Western cultural tendency to separate body from mind, and to elevate the mental over the corporeal, has trivialized the extent to which the body is the obvious point of departure for any process of knowing, especially participant observation. This cultural tendency, as well as a weakness for mistaking words for things and for viewing material objects as neutral and mute, contribute to the neglect of the material world.

Culture↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Creating metasummaries of qualitative findings.

BACKGROUND: The translation and grounded theory techniques typically cited as the method for producing qualitative metasyntheses do not lend themselves well to qualitative survey findings as they do not contain the integrating concepts or controlling metaphors upon which these techniques depend. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this article is to describe a process for creating metasummaries of qualitative survey findings. METHODS: This article is based on completed work in an ongoing methodological study aimed at developing a usable and transparent protocol for combining the findings in reports of health-related qualitative studies. The sample for this work included 45 published and unpublished reports of qualitative studies of HIV-positive women with findings on motherhood, 39 of which contained findings in the form of surveys of data. Almost 800 findings were extracted. These extracted findings were reduced to 93 abstracted findings, and manifest frequency and intensity effect sizes were calculated. RESULTS: Five findings had effect sizes ranging from 25-60%, with both published and unpublished reports contributing about equally to the strength of these findings. Seventy-three findings had effect sizes of <9%, 47 of them with effect sizes of only 2%. In most of these cases, only one work contained the finding and these works had generally fewer space restrictions. Four reports with few space restrictions contained 63% of the findings across all 45 reports. CONCLUSIONS: Qualitative metasummaries are useful end products of research integration studies involving reports of findings in the form of qualitative surveys, and may serve as a foundation for qualitative metasyntheses.

Abstracting and Indexing↗