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Margarete Sandelowski

Publications and source records attributed to Margarete Sandelowski.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
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↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bridging the gap between research and practice: The development of a digital library of research syntheses.

This article describes the development of a digital library as a resource for clinicians and researchers working with women with HIV infection. We wanted to find a new way of communicating the findings from the 114 studies that we used as the method case. The development of the SandBar Digital Library (http://sonweb.unc.edu/sandbar), a product of a 5-year project to develop the analytic techniques for qualitative metasynthesis, is described from its inception, including analyses of the potential users and how they might use such a resource. The Digital Library evolved over a 3-year period, with continuous feedback from a group of researchers and clinicians who are also experts in the care of HIV-positive people. It provides a concise and comprehensive compilation of findings in two major areas of concern for the seropositive women who were the participants in the studies: motherhood and stigma.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The travesty of choosing after positive prenatal diagnosis.

OBJECTIVE: To integrate the findings of qualitative studies of expectant parents receiving positive prenatal diagnosis. DATA SOURCES: Seventeen published and unpublished reports appearing between 1984 and 2001 and retrieved between December of 2002 and March of 2003. The electronic databases searched include Academic Search Elite, AIDS Information Online (AIDSLINE), Anthropological Index Online, Anthropological Literature, Black Studies, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Digital Dissertations, Dissertation Abstracts Index (DAI), Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC), MEDLINE, PsycInfo, Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS), PubMed, Social Science Abstracts (SocSci Abstracts), Social Science Citation Index, Social Work Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts (Sociofile), Women's Resources International, and Women's Studies. STUDY SELECTION: Qualitative studies involving expectant parents living in the United States of any race, ethnicity, nationality, or class who learned during any time in pregnancy of any fetal impairment by any means of diagnosis were eligible for inclusion. DATA EXTRACTION: Metasummary techniques, including the calculation of frequency effect sizes, were used to aggregate the findings. Metasynthesis techniques, including constant comparison analysis and the reciprocal translation of concepts, were used to interpret the findings. DATA SYNTHESIS: The topical emphasis in the findings is on the termination of pregnancy following positive diagnosis. The thematic emphasis is on the dilemmas of choice and decision making. Positive prenatal diagnosis was for couples an experience of chosen losses and lost choices. Couples managed information to minimize stigmatization and cognitive dissonance. CONCLUSIONS: Existing guidelines for caring for couples after perinatal losses must accommodate the chosen loss experientially defining positive prenatal diagnosis.

Abortion, Induced↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Substance abuse in HIV-positive women.

Early in the U.S. HIV/AIDS pandemic, the role of substance abuse in the spread of AIDS was clearly established. However, the relationship of HIV and substance abuse is more complex than simply noting that injection drug use is a mode of transmission for the virus. HIV infection and substance abuse disorders interact in a complex fashion, with each acting as a potential catalyst or obstacle in the treatment of the other. In this article, we report the results of a qualitative metasynthesis of studies containing information on substance abuse among HIV-positive women, using 74 published and unpublished reports. The data on 1,548 women, who were primarily mothers from minority groups, allowed us to construct a trajectory that describes the events of their lives with regard to substance abuse and its intersection with HIV infection.

Adaptation, Psychological↗