The Implications Of Previous Research For The Design Of This Study.
The research literature highlights a number of key themes which characterise the debate on nurses’ use of research information:
. the use of self report instruments for examinig utilization or barriers. For example Funk et al’s (1995) Barriers to Research Scale and Rodgers (2000) survey both fail to account for the fact that nurses may over-report their use of research based material . the failure to account for the fact that nurses may not recognise knowledge derived from research or ‘science’ and that which is (re)classified as experiential or practical . small sample sizes and/or low response rates in traditional survey type designs which rely on normally distributed data and adequate response rates to meet minimum statistical and methodological assumptions . some reliance on the assumption that using research (as evidenced by behavioural change) is a linear process resulting from simple exposure to research based messages for practice and the necessary organisational ingredients being in place
. an absence of robust evaluations of methods to promote the increased use of research by nurses
. little qualitative research dealing with the basis for information use. For example, few explorations of what
drives nurses to seek information in their decision making processes.
Despite the volume of research material examining nurses’ utilisation of research information there are a number of important gaps in the knowledge base:
. we do not know what sorts of clinical decisions nurses make in practice
. we don’t know whether these decisions require research based information
. we don’t know if there is a match between available research evidence and the information needs of nurses’ clinical decisions.
In short, we do not yet know the potential for an evidence based approach to nursing practice.
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