Mary E. Duffy

Translating instruments into other languages: basic considerations.

As more people from nonYEnglish-speaking countries settle in the United States, they enter the healthcare system and present unique challenges for conducting nursing and healthcare research. Increasingly, researchers who formerly studied people who could read and write English now find themselves extending their work to people in the population pool who do not understand English. These researchers now must face the challenge of how to gather the same data from nonYEnglish-speaking study participants in a language other than the one in which the instrument(s) was developed and psychometrically evaluated. The purposes of this column are to provide a brief background on the technique of translating a research instrument into another language and to discuss some issues to consider when undertaking and/or evaluating a translated instrument.

Handling missing data: a commonly encountered problem in quantitative research.

Before a researcher can test one or more hypotheses, several preliminary analyses need to be undertaken after data are collected and before the main data analyses are run. Consideration and resolution of any issues that arise are fundamental to an honest analysis of the data. The purpose of this column is 3-fold: to provide an overview of the issue of missing data, to discuss some ways of dealing with missing data, and to provide you with some available resources to resolve the problem.

Resources for Critically Appraising Qualitative Research Evidence for Nursing Practice Clinical Question

As you review the Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) literature, you note the increasing number of qualitative research studies being published. Since you do not know as much about this methodology and how to critically evaluate it, you decide to find out what information is available to help you become more knowledgeable about this research method and how to critically appraise qualitative research reports.

Translation research: its relationship to evidence-based practice.

CLIN ICAL NURSE SPEC IALI ST Research and Quality (AHRQ) issued 2 calls for Translating Research Into Practice (TRIP) grants whose purpose was to improve the translation of research evidence into practice and to inform decision making at the clinical, organizational, healthcare systems, and public policy levels. The emphasis of these projects was the testing of effective and efficient interventions that have the potential to improve clinical practice, enhance patient safety, and sustain practitioner behavior change across multiple health conditions, populations, and healthcare systems. In addition, the recently created NIH Roadmap has a major goal to create translational research centers that will accelerate the translational development of new drugs, biomarkers, and treatment strategies from the laboratory bench to clinical testing.

Resources for determining or evaluating sample size in quantitative research reports.

At a recent meeting of clinical nurse specialists (CNS) in your region, the question was raised about sample size considerations when evaluating specific research reports in the professional literature. Discussion ensued about what factors need to be considered to determine just how big a sample should be to have confidence in the study findings. You also struggled with this same question last year when you were a graduate student writing a research proposal for a nursing research project. So you offer to prepare a brief presentation on the sample size issue to present at the next meeting of the CNS group.

Resources for building a research utilization program.

In recent years, a great emphasis has been placed on developing clinical guidelines well grounded in research evidence. The Clinical Practice Committee in a large healthcare facility has been charged with developing a program to help staff find and utilize available research to develop evidence-based practice (EBP) guidelines and protocols. What exactly do they need to know about using research and where can they find available information to help them develop a research utilization program?

Resources for critically appraising quantitative research evidence for nursing practice.

The critical appraisal of research has long been an essential part of developing a knowledge base for nursing practice. With the growing maturity of the Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) movement in nursing, research appraisal has become much more visible in the synthesis of research findings and their application to developing science-based interventions to underpin nursing practice. Clinical specialists, in particular, are increasingly being called upon to provide leadership in this endeavor. The purpose of this column is to provide a brief background in research appraisal and to describe some available tools for evaluating quantitative research reports. In the next column, I will discuss critical appraisal of qualitative research and describe some available tools.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: a valuable resource for evidence-based practice.

117 decision making at all levels of healthcare. In 1996, this focus shifted to the creation of 3 research programs: collecting and synthesizing published data for developing clinical guidelines; monitoring guideline development and use; and developing a database of existing clinical practice guidelines. With its reauthorization by Congress in late 1999, AHCPR came to be known as AHRQ. Today, AHRQ’s mission is “to improve the quality, safety, efficacy, and effectiveness of healthcare for all Americans”. As 1 of the 13 agencies within DHHS, AHRQ works very closely with 3 of its sister agencies: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). As its director, Dr Carolyn Clancy, so aptly expressed: