Despite past research, uncertainty exists about the processes and factors that motivate couples to limit family size. Under the Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project for the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, the authors undertook a comprehensive review to advance the current state of knowledge about what makes family planning programs work. The review synthesized research conduct...

In the past, researchers have inadvertently caused stigmatization of various populations, first by not involving community members and then through publishing negative findings. In contrast, participatory research, which is based on a partnership between researchers and those affected by the issue being studied, promotes the voice of those being researched. This essay highlights key principles,...

This article characterizes the large research domain of family medicine. It is a domain that can be productively explored from different perspectives, including: (1) the ecology of medical care and its focus on the environments of health care and interactions among them; (2) the realm of causation and important opportunities to discover how people lose and regain their health; (3) knowing medic...

T his month marks the 20th anniversary of the Section of Researchers (SOR) of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and an opportunity for real celebration. During these 20 years the family medicine research enterprise in Canada has grown enormously and arguably is now coming of age. Before the 1990s family medicine research was mainly a cottage industry, with a handful of professional res...

The critical role of family factors is acknowledged in virtually every psychological theory of substance abuse (Brook et al. 1990; Bry 1983; Catalano and Hawkins 1996; Dembo et al. 1979; Dishion et al. 1988; Elliott et al. 1989; Hawkins et al. 1992; Jessor 1993; Kandel and Davies 1992; Kaplan and Johnson 1992; Kellam et al. 1983; Kumpfer 1987; Newcomb and Bentler 1989; Oetting and Lynch 1993; W...

National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding has contributed to improvements in the health of the nation, but the pace of progress, particularly in the war on cancer, has been frustratingly slow. Departments of family medicine receive less NIH funding than all other specialties. Although numerous factors contribute to low family medicine funding levels, persistent undervaluing of primary care pl...

This comment is submitted with the intent of stimulating some exchange between researchers. Although I chose the Woodward et al. study as a vehicle for my statement, I might easily have chosen examples outside the family therapy area.

International Family Planning Perspectives potentialities of photography as a tool for social research”3 at the same time that she was also completing a landmark textbook aimed at increasing the use of sound statistical methods.4 As a result, she is remembered not only for being “a pioneer in statistics and demography” but also as “an early advocate of combining qualitative and quantitative met...

review board approval for research. However, in order to be a trustworthy and reliable systematic review, the quality of the systematic review process must be improved. Core standards for systematic review may include 1) writing the review protocol, 2) comprehensive literature search, 3) duplicate study selection and data extraction, 4) assessment of scientific quality of the included studies, ...