Making our nursing research matter - Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem
Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem. 01/01/2016;69(5):813-814
Nurses worldwide are being increasingly exposed to new and interesting research methodologies. At the same time, they are feeling considerable pressure to ensure that the studies they propose are sufficiently methodologically rigorous to pass the scrutiny of review for funding or publication. In this context, it is increasingly important to remind ourselves that methodological rigor does not necessarily produce relevance. As members of a health care profession that takes great pride in the covenant of our special social contract, we need to repeatedly remind ourselves that the purpose of nursing research is not simply to do it, but rather to use it in the service of our mission on behalf of society.
In the conventional scientific tradition, it is common to rely heavily on objective methodological criteria to assess the caliber of a proposed or completed study. We evaluate pieces of research in accordance with a predetermined set of criteria developed to permit a measure of reliability associated with the interpretation of such aspects as sample size, data collection procedures, use of theorizing, and overt expression of limitations. We understand that these criteria have evolved from an appreciation for the ways in which faulty logic can creep into a study design, rendering its findings useless or misrepresentative. However, it is also important to remember that, for the most part, the study designs we draw from have been handed down to us from disciplines whose focus of inquiry was far less complex and “messy” than the kinds of embedded and dynamic human problems about which nursing tends to be concerned. In the actual practice of our research, isolating aspects of human experience from their natural context, limiting our selection to identifiably typical cases, controlling for variation, and many other familiar aspects of conventional methodological tradition may actually weaken our capacity to do justice to the ideas that are most clearly relevant to the knowledge nursing needs to enact its core purpose and fulfil its societal mandate.
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Nurses worldwide are being increasingly exposed to new and interesting research methodologies. At the same time, they are feeling considerable pressure to ensure that the studies they propose are sufficiently methodologically rigorous to pass the scrutiny of review for funding or publication. In this context, it is increasingly important to remind ourselves that methodological rigor does not necessarily produce relevance. As members of a health care profession that takes great pride in the covenant of our special social contract, we need to repeatedly remind ourselves that the purpose of nursing research is not simply to do it, but rather to use it in the service of our mission on behalf of society.
In the conventional scientific tradition, it is common to rely heavily on objective methodological criteria to assess the caliber of a proposed or completed study. We evaluate pieces of research in accordance with a predetermined set of criteria developed to permit a measure of reliability associated with the interpretation of such aspects as sample size, data collection procedures, use of theorizing, and overt expression of limitations. We understand that these criteria have evolved from an appreciation for the ways in which faulty logic can creep into a study design, rendering its findings useless or misrepresentative. However, it is also important to remember that, for the most part, the study designs we draw from have been handed down to us from disciplines whose focus of inquiry was far less complex and "messy" than the kinds of embedded and dynamic human problems about which nursing tends to be concerned. In the actual practice of our research, isolating aspects of human experience from their natural context, limiting our selection to identifiably typical cases, controlling for variation, and many other familiar aspects of conventional methodological tradition may actually weaken our capacity to do justice to the ideas that are most clearly relevant to the knowledge nursing needs to enact its core purpose and fulfil its societal mandate.
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