Research and Evidence-Based Practice: For Nursing, Health and Social Care Students (Essentials) - Tapa blanda

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Vanessa Heaslip is a Professor of Nursing and Healthcare Equity at the University of Salford, and a visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at Stavanger University, Norway. She has extensive experience in nursing and nurse education and is an experienced qualitative researcher. Her research interests focus on socially excluded groups whose voices are not traditionally heard in the academic or professional discourse, as well as experiences of marginalised communities who experience inequality of opportunity in accessing statutory services. Professor Heaslip has contributed to many books and has written journal articles, editorials and discussion papers. She is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Nursing and writes regular reviews for a variety of nursing and academic journals, based on her expertise in qualitative research, socially excluded groups, marginalised communities, equality and diversity.

Bruce Lindsay worked in health care for over thirty years after qualifying in children’s nursing and adult nursing in Sheffield. He was awarded a PhD for his research into the development of the care of children in acute hospitals. He was a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Nursing and Midwifery Research Unit at the School of Health Sciences, University of East Anglia, until 2012, and was a systematic reviewer for Cochrane for fifteen years. He is now a freelance music journalist and biographer.

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People use the word ‘research’ in two major ways. There is the idea of research as an activity: ‘I’m doing research’ or ‘I’m researching’. There is also the idea of research as a product: ‘we’re using research’ or ‘the research tells us to work like this’. In the latter case, we think it is more correct to talk about ‘research findings’ or ‘results’, not just ‘research’. For this reason, when we refer to the products or outputs of research projects we will usually use the term ‘research findings’. Research as a process or activity needs more careful consideration. For instance, there is a considerable media focus on obesity in Britain, and how we as a nation are becoming more obese. Let’s say we want to explore this further and want to know the weight of the average British resident. We ask all our friends (62 people) their weight in kilograms; we then add up all these weights and divide by 62. We decide that the answer tells us the weight of the average resident of Britain. Have we just done some research? Are we right to think that our result answers our question? If not, what should we have done? As this example shows, research doesn’t have a single definition that everyone agrees on. Some authors use the word ‘research’ to refer to any systematic inquiry or structured investigation. Others emphasise the need for a question to be answered or a phenomenon or event to be explored or investigated. Some definitions are very short. In preparation for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), which is used to assess the quality of research carried out in higher education institutions in the UK, research was defined as ‘…a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared’ (Research Excellence Framework, 2012). Meanwhile, Polit and Beck (2012, p. 4) define research as ‘systematic inquiry that uses disciplined methods to answer questions and solve problems’. Both these definitions suggest that the ultimate goal of research is to develop, refine and expand a body of knowledge, while also recognising that research is a planned process of inquiry.