{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01813346228239845, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0031431334622823983, 'mean_word_length': 5.484326018808777, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Qualitative Research Proposals—Part I: Posing the Problem

Previously in Spotlight, members of the Center for Clinical Investigation National Advisory Board have provided excellent guidance in the design of small grants using quantitative methods, that is, research that uses experimental, quasi-experimental, descriptive, or epidemiological designs to describe phenomena in terms of their variables. A 6-part series, starting with this article, will focus on qualitative research and will be published in the 2007 “Spotlights” series in JWOCN. In quantitative studies, the research identifies selected characteristics of participants who represent the phenomenon in question, disassociates those characteristics from other attributes that are not included in the research design, and compares the selected characteristics across cases to ascertain “whether and how they exert[ed] any influence on each other.”1(p526) These research designs are ideal for comparing one treatment or group against another, for identifying potential predictors of particular outcomes, or for describing the incidence or prevalence of health conditions. Although these designs are very powerful and provide clinically useful information, they may not be appropriate to answer all of the questions proposed by wound, ostomy and continence nurse clinicians and researchers. It may be that the important sources of variation in a phenomenon are poorly understood or that no measures exist to quantify the characteristics of interest. For example, although a great deal is known about the physiologic mechanisms of incontinence in persons with spina bifida, much less is known about how adults with spina bifida decide how to manage their incontinence or about how those decisions are integrated into their daily lives. Questions about meaning and process in everyday life are best answered by qualitative research designs, and the identification of important sources of commonality and difference that can be found by a close examination of individual experience can provide the foundation for subsequent interventions and outcome measures. According to Morse,2 qualitative methods are used “when little is known about a topic, when the research context is poorly understood, when the boundaries of the domain are ill defined, when the phenomenon is not quantifiable, when the nature of the problem is murky, or when the investigator suspects that the status quo is poorly conceived and the topic needs to be reexamined.”(p833) Qualitative research methods are ideal for these situations because their flexibility permits the researcher to be guided by the data rather than by a set of fixed a priori hypotheses. Thus the aims of qualitative studies and their associated research questions look somewhat different than the aims of quantitative studies. The first step in the design of any research study is the identification of a problem. It has often been suggested that the research problem determines the method, but in practice, this causal model oversimplifies the process. Most often the researcher’s preferred approach to problemsolving is likely to influence the choice of a problem, the way that problem is understood, and the methods by which that problem will be studied. Nurses who are interested in “the whole picture,” in the way persons with wounds, incontinence, or ostomies make sense of their health or manage their lives outside institutional walls, will find qualitative questions particularly appealing because of the ability of qualitative methods to capture experience in context. At first, questions generated from these issues may seem a poor match with agency funding priorities. Like all researchers, applicants for WOCN small grants will need to look carefully at the language used by agencies to describe their mission, activities, or funding choices. For example, the management of peristomal complications might be studied through a randomized clinical trial of interventions or through interviews with patients with stomas and their family members. Each approach has inherent merits and drawbacks, and it is the responsibility