Clinical significance in nursing research: A discussion and descriptive analysis.

Background: It is widely understood that statistical significance should not be equated with clinical significance, but the topic of clinical significance has not received much attention in the nursing literature. By contrast, interest in conceptualizing and operationalizing clinical significance has been a "hot topic" in other health care fields for several decades.

Objectives: The major purpose of this paper is to briefly describe recent advances in defining and quantifying clinical significance.

Assessing measurement in health: Beyond reliability and validity.

Background: Psychometric concepts have undergone a transformation in health fields, as articulated in a consensus report by an international panel of health measurement experts: COSMIN, the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments.

Objectives: The aims of this paper are to describe emerging ideas relating to the development and testing of new measures in health fields, to present a revised measurement taxonomy that builds upon COSMIN, and to explore the extent to which the new measurement concepts have played a role in psychometric assessments in nursing.

Design: A descriptive analysis of a sample of psychometric papers published in three major nursing journals was undertaken.

The effects of multimodal exercise on cognitive and physical functioning and brain-derived neurotrophic factor in older women: a randomised controlled trial.

Objective: to test the effect of a 16-week multimodal exercise program on neurocognitive and physical functioning and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

Design: a single-blinded, parallel-group randomised controlled trial.

Settings: university campus and community-based halls.

Getting serious about test-retest reliability: a critique of retest research and some recommendations.

Purpose: To focus attention on the need for rigorous and carefully designed test-retest reliability assessments for new patient-reported outcomes and to encourage retest researchers to be thoughtful, ambitious, and creative in their retest efforts.

Methods: The paper outlines key challenges that confront retest researchers, calls attention to some limitations in meeting those challenges, and describes some strategies to improve retest research.

Results: Modest retest coefficients are often reported as acceptable, and many important decisions-such as the retest interval-appear not to be evidence-based.

Infusion phlebitis assessment measures: a systematic review.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: Phlebitis is a common and painful complication of peripheral intravenous cannulation. The aim of this review was to identify the measures used in infusion phlebitis assessment and evaluate evidence regarding their reliability, validity, responsiveness and feasibility.

Method: We conducted a systematic literature review of the Cochrane library, Ovid MEDLINE and EBSCO CINAHL until September 2013.

Is there still gender bias in nursing research? An update.

Data from 300 studies published in four research journals in 2010-2011 were analyzed to assess whether nurse researchers continue to oversample females. One-third of the studies had samples that were 100% female and, on average, 74% of all study participants were female. As was found for studies published 5 years earlier, the bias against male participants was consistent across studies differing in methods, specialty areas, funding, and sample characteristics.

Study protocol: a randomised controlled trial of the effects of a multi-modal exercise program on cognition and physical functioning in older women.

Background: Intervention studies testing the efficacy of cardiorespiratory exercise have shown some promise in terms of improving cognitive function in later life. Recent developments suggest that a multi-modal exercise intervention that includes motor as well as physical training and requires sustained attention and concentration, may better elicit the actual potency of exercise to enhance cognitive performance. This study will test the effect of a multi-modal exercise program, for older women, on cognitive and physical functioning.

Statistical process control in nursing research.

In intervention studies in which randomization to groups is not possible, researchers typically use quasi-experimental designs. Time series designs are strong quasi-experimental designs but are seldom used, perhaps because of technical and analytic hurdles. Statistical process control (SPC) is an alternative analytic approach to testing hypotheses about intervention effects using data collected over time.

Developing a model of competence in the operating theatre: psychometric validation of the perceived perioperative competence scale-revised.

Aim: This paper describes the development and validation of the Revised Perioperative Competence Scale (PPCS-R).

Background: There is a lack of a psychometrically tested sound self-assessment tools to measure nurses' perceived competence in the operating room.

Methods: Content validity was established by a panel of international experts and the original 98-item scale was pilot tested with 345 nurses in Queensland, Australia.

Innovativeness of nurse leaders.

Aim: The purpose of the present study was to describe the innovativeness and the rate of adoption of change among chief nursing officers (CNOs) of acute care hospitals, and explore the difference in the innovativeness of CNOs of Magnet hospitals vs. non-Magnet hospitals.

Background: There is little evidence to guide the description of innovativeness for nurse leaders, crucial to the implementation of evidence-based practice standards.

Blinding during the analysis of research data.

Blinding in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is a strategy that is widely endorsed as a method of reducing the biases that can result from people's awareness of study participants' treatment group status. Blinding of participants and interventionists is often impossible in nursing RCTs, but data analysts can almost always be blinded. Yet, such blinding seldom occurs, perhaps because of misperceptions about the objectivity of statistical analysis.

Impact factors in nursing journals.

Journal impact factors (IFs), a measure of citation frequency, are published annually in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Journal IFs, although controversial because of the uses to which they have been put in academic arenas, remain a metric about which nurses should be informed. This paper discusses key issues in the controversy, explains how IFs are computed, and presents historical and 2009 IF data for nursing journals.

Deliberate ignorance: a systematic review of blinding in nursing clinical trials.

Background: Blinding is recommended widely as a strategy in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to reduce biases that can result from awareness of who is receiving the intervention being tested. The absence of blinding, especially when the primary outcomes are subjective, has been found to be associated with inflated estimates of treatment effects, yet little is known about the use of blinding in nursing RCTs.

Objectives: The purposes of this study were (a) to describe the extent to which nurse researchers state that they used blinding as a bias-reduction strategy or explain why it was not used, (b) to identify the groups that are blinded when blinding is used, (c) to assess whether the term blinding or masking is more prevalent, and (d) to explore factors that might affect the use or acknowledgement of blinding in nursing trials.

Publication opportunities in nonnursing journals.

The purpose of this article was to identify nonnursing journals that have relevance to nursing, that publish articles that cite the nursing literature and may offer excellent but seldom-considered publication opportunities for nurses. Using 22 indicators derived through citation analysis, 64 nonnursing journals that are highly related to nursing were identified. The authors provide information about these 64 journals related to their subject matter, number of issues annually, and their 2008 impact factor.

An outcomes evaluation of an Australian Hospital in the Nursing Home admission avoidance programme.

Aims And Objectives: To undertake an outcomes evaluation of a Hospital in the Nursing Home (HINH) admission avoidance programme.

Background: Admission avoidance type services such as Hospital in the Home have a place in improving service delivery for certain population groups. Research related to HINH has been limited, derived from various different health care systems internationally and results are varied.

Intention-to-treat in randomized controlled trials: recommendations for a total trial strategy.

Intention-to-treat (ITT) in randomized controlled trials involves keeping participants in the treatment groups to which they were randomized regardless of whether they withdraw following randomization. Intention-to-treat is a strategy for maintaining the integrity of randomization and strengthening the trial's internal validity. Although ITT is advocated by the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines, there is confusion about what ITT means and little specific advice on how to achieve it.

Generalization in quantitative and qualitative research: myths and strategies.

Generalization, which is an act of reasoning that involves drawing broad inferences from particular observations, is widely-acknowledged as a quality standard in quantitative research, but is more controversial in qualitative research. The goal of most qualitative studies is not to generalize but rather to provide a rich, contextualized understanding of some aspect of human experience through the intensive study of particular cases. Yet, in an environment where evidence for improving practice is held in high esteem, generalization in relation to knowledge claims merits careful attention by both qualitative and quantitative researchers.

The use of the intention-to-treat principle in nursing clinical trials.

Background: In randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the intention-to-treat (ITT) principle, which involves maintaining study participants in the treatment groups to which they were randomized regardless of postrandomization withdrawal, is the recommended analytic approach for preserving the integrity of randomization, yet little is known about the use of ITT in nursing RCTs.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which nurse researchers who conduct RCTs state that they have used ITT, the extent to which they adhere to ITT principles, and the methods they use to handle missing data.

Methods: Data regarding ITT analysis, participant flow, rates of attrition, and methods of handling missing data were extracted and coded from a consecutive sample of 124 RCTs published in 16 nursing journals in 2007 and 2008.

International differences in nursing research, 2005-2006.

Purpose: To compare the characteristics of nursing research being done in different countries, using data from studies published in nonspecialty, English-language nursing journals.

Design: Data for this cross-sectional analysis were retrieved from a consecutive sample of 1,072 studies published in eight leading English-language research journals in 2005 and 2006.

Methods: For each study, data were extracted on the characteristics of the study participants and authors, study focus-specialty area, funding, and methodologic attributes.

International gender bias in nursing research, 2005-2006: a quantitative content analysis.

Aim: This paper reports a study that examined the extent to which nurse researchers internationally disproportionately include females as participants in their research.

Background: A bias toward predominantly male samples has been well-documented in medical research, but recently a gender bias favoring women in nursing research has been identified in studies published in four North American journals.

Method: We extracted information about study samples and characteristics of the studies and authors from a consecutive sample of 834 studies published in eight leading English-language nursing research journals in 2005-2006.

Nurse characteristics and inferences about children's pain.

The purpose of this study was to describe pediatric nurses' projected responses to children's pain as described in vignettes of hospitalized children and to explore nurse characteristics that might influence those responses. A survey was mailed to a national random sample of 700 RNs, and 334 nurses responded. The survey included case reports of three hospitalized school-aged children experiencing pain.

Is there gender bias in nursing research?

Using data from a consecutive sample of 259 studies published in four leading nursing research journals in 2005-2006, we examined whether nurse researchers favor females as study participants. On average, 75.3% of study participants were female, and 38% of studies had all-female samples.

Stereotyping and nurses' recommendations for treating pain in hospitalized children.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether nurses' recommendations for managing children's pain were influenced by stereotypes based on children's personal attributes. Three vignettes, in which hospitalized children's sex, race, and attractiveness were experimentally manipulated, were mailed to a national random sample of 700 pediatric nurses; 334 nurses responded. Responses to vignette questions indicated little evidence of stereotyping.