'Because it's the wife who has to look after the man': A descriptive qualitative study of older women and the intersection of gender and the provision of family caregiving at the end of life.

Background: Research indicates that women are the primary family caregivers for others at life's end and, because of ageing populations, will keep fulfilling this role as they age. Yet, little is known about how the gendered nature of caregiving contributes to older women's understandings of providing care.

Aim: To explore how gender norms constructed older women's views about the appropriate roles of women and men in providing palliative and end-of-life care for family members.

The experiences of women (65-74 years) living with a long-term condition in the shadow of ageing.

Aims: This paper reports on a study that explored experiences of women (65-74 years) as they grow older while living with a long-term condition. The phenomenon of focus was 'ageing with a long-term condition', rather than the experience of developing a long-term condition after reaching older adulthood.

Background: People with long-term conditions are living into older age.

Perceived unmet needs for health care among Parkinson's Society of New Zealand members with Parkinson's disease.

Unlabelled: We surveyed nationwide health needs for Parkinson's disease (PD) among New Zealand Parkinson's Society members with PD.

Background: Little literature assesses how people with PD perceive their health needs for this medical condition.

Method: Cross-sectional survey of health needs through personal, structured telephone interviews with a random sample of 500 Parkinson's Society members with PD.

From experience to definition: addressing the question 'what is qualitative research?'.

Most health professionals today have heard of 'qualitative research' but many remain confused as to what it is and how to go about doing it. In this paper, two experienced qualitative researchers become engaged in conversation exploring the question 'what is qualitative research?' Lynne Giddings and Liz Smythe are Associate Professors in the Faculty of Health & Environmental Sciences at the Auckland University of Technology. They engage a reader in exploring issues such as: What might draw you to qualitative research? How does qualitative research make a difference to practice? How can reading a qualitative research article inform practice? From a qualitative perspective, what is 'truth'? How many participants? What happens to the data? What about the bias of the researcher? Can qualitative findings be trusted? Stories and exemplars are used to highlight the processes and issues involved in undertaking a qualitative research study.

Women's experience of ageing with a chronic condition.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study to explore the experiences of 'almost old' women as they grow older while living with a chronic condition.

Background: Little is known about the contextual effects of ageing and how it shapes and is shaped by a woman's chronic illness experience. Nurses' understanding of this phenomenon can have positive effects on how their client accesses and responds to healthcare.

A Trojan horse for positivism?: a critique of mixed methods research.

Mixed methods research is captured by a pragmatically inflected form of postpositivism. Although it passes for an alternative methodological movement that purports to breach the divide between qualitative and quantitative research, most mixed methods studies favor the forms of analysis and truth finding associated with positivism. We anticipate a move away from exploring more philosophical questions or undertaking modes of enquiry that challenge the status quo.

How to survive (and enjoy) doing a thesis: the experiences of a methodological working group.

'Doing a thesis', whether for Masters or PhD, can be a lonely and tortuous journey. This article offers a complementary process to the traditional apprenticeship supervision model. It describes the experiences of students who during their thesis research met monthly in a grounded theory working group.

Mixed methods research for the novice researcher.

Mixed methods research is becoming increasingly popular in the health and social science disciplines. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the varieties of mixed methods designs. We begin by situating mixed methods research in the context of a paradigmatic framework which assists a researcher in making decisions concerning the design of their study.

A longitudinal survey of nurses' self-reported performance during an entry to practice programme.

Performance expectations are a critical issue in the transition from student to practising nurse for both nurses and their employers. We conducted a study to compare self-reported changes in both frequency and quality of performance of nursing behaviours in a cohort of Aotearoa/New Zealand recently graduated nurses undertaking a one year entry to practice programme. Thirty-three nurses were surveyed, seven weeks after beginning the programme and again seven months later, using a modified version of Schwirian's (1978) Six-Dimension Scale of Nursing Performance (6-DSNP).

Vulnerable bodies: competing discourses of intimate bodily care.

Nursing practices are subject to intersecting and competing discourses, which give them different, sometimes contradictory, meanings. In this article, using a case of intimate bodily care, we explore the workings of these discourses in a nursing student's account of her first experience of bathing an elderly woman. In particular we were interested in how different meanings of nursing "care" figure into the student's story.

Health disparities, social injustice, and the culture of nursing.

Background: Nurses are well positioned to challenge institutionalized social injustices that lead to health disparities.

Objective: The aim of this cross-cultural study was to collect stories of difference and fairness within nursing.

Methods: The study used a life history methodology informed by feminist theory and critical social theory.

Making sense of methodologies: a paradigm framework for the novice researcher.

Methodologies abound in the field of health and social science research, making a confusing terrain for new researchers. In this article, we offer order out of confusion. Drawing on our work as postgraduate teachers, we outline a paradigm framework which proposes that methodologies are similar or different because of their underlying assumptions and values.

A theoretical model of social consciousness.

The article presents a theoretical model of social consciousness developed from nurses' life histories. A 3-position dialectical framework--acquired, awakened, and expanded social consciousness--makes visible the way people respond to social injustice in their lives and in the lives of others. The positions coexist, are not hierarchical, and are contextually situated.