• essential study information
• participant able to comprehend
• competence of participant to give consent
• voluntary consent

• research purpose/activities
• risk/benefits
• assurance of anonymity/confidentiality
• continual voluntary participation

Committee of at least 5 members

• nurses
• community member
• physicians
• multiple background, diversity, education experience

Look for:

• benefits outweighing risks
• no conflict of interest
• ethical principals and human rights upheld

how to judge whether or not to believe the findings

credibility, auditability, fittingness, confirmability, transferability, transparency

helps researchers to make decisions to: guide nursing practice, contribute to instrument development, develop nursing theory.

1. rigorous data collection procedures
2. set out with specific research questions before research begins
3. rigor in qualitative research means: reflect participant experience, triangulating sources, and using peer/external auditors of the accounts
4. writes in a way that helps the reader to feel like they are there along the way
5. reflexivity: setting up oneself as part of the qualitative research process, who we are is where we take the research
6. ethical

verification of data analysis methods by an outside person

truth of findings judged by participants and others within the discipline

may return to participants to validate interpretation

process of checking, confirming, making sure, being certain

woven throughout the design of the qualitative study

qualitative research is iterative, so verification moves back and forth with systematic checking

• researcher is led from the research question through data collection and interpretation
• reader can follow steps of reasoning with explicit examples of data, interpretation and synthesis.
• Transparency: research keeps a record of definitions used for coding data, and how definitions may have changed over time.

• faithfulness to everday reality of the participants
• the findings "ring true" with the human experience that is being reported
• others in the discipline usually determine fittingness

• research process may not be linear
• sampling plans may change
• data collection and analysis are interactive and occur concurrently
• ideas emerging from data are reconfirmed in new data

• significant problem to nursing
• demonstrates sounds methodology "Tight fit"
• clear purpose statement
• sample matches intent of purpose
• design matches intent of purpose
• analysis and results matches intent of purpose
• Demonstrates Rigor: credible findings
• reliable methods
• valid methods

• merge statistical findings into one statistical finding
• reviews RCTs and correlational studies
• new statistical analyses, using all of the data to show more significance
• take averages
• more confident strength of relationship
• Goal: pool results

• clearly expressed research problem, purpose
• comprehensive literature search
• description of the statistics used to pool data
• application to practice.

• summary of other results
• (example: 13 of 17 studies found positive effects of pet therapy, 3 studies found negative effects, and 1 study found no effect)
• Reviews RCTs, Meta-analyses, integrative reviews
• Goal:
• determine best research evidence available (evaluating studies is important)
• Produce national, international guidelines for policies for practice
• algorithm (decision-making tree)

• highlight multiple findings across qualitative studies
• Descriptors of SES
• education
• parent's education
• annual salary
• hourly wage
• Goal: develop knowledge in an area

• integrates description/characteristics about a concept from qualitative studies
• SES is a measure of how much education and income individuals receive
• Goal: generate accessible knowledge or concepts that can be used in other research or practice

• cclearly expressed research problem, purpose
• comprehensive literature searh (inc/exc criteria)
• discussion of analysis and interpretation of findings
• Systematic

• Identify-analyze-sythesize
• what is common and what is contrasting across studies
• Sources: quant, outcomes, qual
• Goal: determine what is and is not known about a phenomenon which provides future directions for research

• clearly expressed research problem, purpose
• comprehensive literature search (inc/exc criteria)
• description of study appraisal for quality
• clear and consistent data "hunting and gathering" tools.