The manual therapy professions have almost exclusively focused on the use of quantitative research to help inform their practices. This paper argues that a greater use of qualitative research will help develop a more robust and comprehensive knowledge base in manual therapy. The types of knowledge used in practice and generated from the two research paradigms are explored. It is hoped that an u...

Ontologies are being applied very successfully in supporting information and knowledge exchange between people and organisations. However, for many reasons, different people and organisations will tend to use different ontologies. Therefore, in order to exchange information and knowledge, either everyone must adopt the same ontology — an unlikely scenario — or it must be possible to reconcile d...

BACKGROUND Qualitative research is undertaken with randomized controlled trials of health interventions. Our aim was to explore the perceptions of researchers with experience of this endeavour to understand the added value of qualitative research to the trial in practice. METHODS A telephone semi-structured interview study with 18 researchers with experience of undertaking the trial and/or th...

Feasibility studies are increasingly undertaken in preparation for randomised controlled trials in order to explore uncertainties and enable trialists to optimise the intervention or the conduct of the trial. Qualitative research can be used to examine and address key uncertainties prior to a full trial. We present guidance that researchers, research funders and reviewers may wish to consider w...

OBJECTIVE This study was undertaken to examine the role of gender as it relates to access to housing among individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) in Canada. DESIGN An exploratory, qualitative approach was used to assess the perspectives of Canadian housing experts. The focus of inquiry was on the role of gender and associated intersections (eg, ethnicity) in pathways to housing access a...

AIM In this paper, I call into question the widely-held assumption of a single, more or less unified paradigm of 'qualitative research' whose methodologies share certain epistemological and ontological characteristics, and explore the implications of this position for judgements about the quality of research studies. BACKGROUND After a quarter of a century of debate in nursing about how best ...

BACKGROUND The syntheses of multiple qualitative studies can pull together data across different contexts, generate new theoretical or conceptual models, identify research gaps, and provide evidence for the development, implementation and evaluation of health interventions. This study aims to develop a framework for reporting the synthesis of qualitative health research. METHODS We conducted ...

This paper describes a phenomenological study in which the authors explored students’ experiences learning qualitative research in a variety of academic fields. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with six participants from various academic fields who had completed at least one post-secondary-school-level qualitative research course and who were not students of the researchers. U...

BACKGROUND It is recommended that older people report their falls to their general practitioner (GP), to identify falls risk factors. However, many older people do not report falling to their GP. Little is known about the reasons why older people do and do not seek help about falling. OBJECTIVE To explore why older women do or do not seek GP help after a fall. METHODS A qualitative study, u...