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Biomedical subjects

Janice Penrod

Publications and source records attributed to Janice Penrod.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Supporting older adults living with multiple chronic conditions.

This qualitative study was conducted using focus groups to explore the strategies commonly employed by older adults (N = 37) to manage multiple chronic conditions. Key strategies identified were relating with health care providers, medicating, exercising, changing dietary patterns, seeking information, relying on spirituality and/or religion, and engaging in life. Although social support was not mentioned as a discrete strategy, the participants' social networks were embedded in all of the categories. This study supports building a partnership of care in which nurses and other health care professionals function in supportive and educative roles to enhance the older person's lifelong self-care management and ability to stay in control of multiple chronic health conditions.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

A discussion of chain referral as a method of sampling hard-to-reach populations.

Nursing research often requires inquiry into sensitive topics that involve hidden or hard- to reach populations. However, identifying and sampling these populations for research purposes is often fraught with difficulties. Barriers include society's lack of tolerance of diverse groups, social stigma, concern for issues of confidentiality, and fear of exposure because of possible threats to security. Chain referral sampling techniques are proposed to minimize bias while maintaining privacy and confidentiality. Techniques of chain referral sampling are detailed for use in researching sensitive topics and hidden populations. When carefully planned and executed, this sampling design offers transcultural nurse researchers a reasonable method for accessing and studying special populations that are particularly hard-to-reach.

Humans↗

Getting funded: writing a successful qualitative small-project proposal.

As a program of research is developed, the small-project grant is a perfect means for initiating discrete projects to build support for larger funding. The author describes the development of a successful small qualitative project proposal on the disabling effects of osteoporosis. She dissects the process of writing a small-project proposal to assist novice or junior researchers in securing funding for small projects that, she hopes, will build toward funding on a larger scale. Major portions of the proposal are included in this article to demonstrate the keys to success in getting small qualitative projects funded.

Female↗

Concept advancement: enhancing inductive validity.

Enhancing inductive validity while advancing a concept has always been a dilemma for qualitative researchers. This dilemma is paramount for researchers completing a series of small discrete projects all focused on the same concept. How do researchers use knowledge from their earlier research while maintaining an inductive paradigm? Template comparison, a method of sequential triangulation, is proposed as a solution to this problem. Template comparison allows the researcher to use findings from earlier studies, which employed the same or different qualitative methods, as a guide for the data collection, interpretative, and theoretical phases of the new study. The authors' research of the concept of trust is used as an example of the application of template comparison.

Concept Formation↗

Integrating concepts for the development of qualitatively-derived theory.

The development of qualitatively-derived theory (QDT) remains a challenge for researchers wishing to retain the complexity of reality. The techniques of concept integration provide a means to link concepts according to their shared attributes and logically according to their mutual interactions, reactions, and responses. While retaining all of the advantages of qualitative induction, integrating concepts in this manner places QDT theory at the upper end of mid-range theory, or disclosive theory, to produce a theory of higher abstraction and broader scope.

Concept Formation↗

Absolute involvement: the experience of mothers of ventilator-dependent children.

Home care for a technology dependent child is stressful, costly, and time consuming, yet there is little research concerning the maternal caregiver experience. Sixteen mothers whose children required ventilators participated in this study. Using grounded theory methods, 32 interviews were examined to identify the core variable of absolute involvement, describing the provision of a mother's self-determined standard of care for her child. The Model of Absolute Involvement consisted of the attributes of mothering, meeting the demands of caregiving, and employing strategies of care. Implications for nursing practice are discussed in terms of skills and strategies mothers used during day-to-day activity

Journal Article↗