OBJECTIVE As the global burden of chronic disease rises, policy makers are showing a strong interest in adopting telehealth technologies for use in long term condition management, including COPD. However, there remain barriers to its implementation and sustained use. To date, there has been limited qualitative investigation into how users (both patients/carers and staff) perceive and experience...

OBJECTIVE To systematically search for research about the effectiveness of mandatory reporting of child maltreatment and to synthesise qualitative research that explores mandated reporters' (MRs) experiences with reporting. DESIGN As no studies assessing the effectiveness of mandatory reporting were retrieved from our systematic search, we conducted a meta-synthesis of retrieved qualitative r...

BACKGROUND The transition to retirement has been recognised as a critical turning point for physical activity (PA). In an earlier systematic review of quantitative studies, retirement was found to be associated with an increase in recreational PA but with a decrease in PA among retirees from lower occupational groups. To gain a deeper understanding of the quantitative review findings, qualitati...

A computational account of innovative design that integrates qualitative, numerical and heuristic knowledge is presented. Qualitative and numerical models are used to represent the physical knowledge of the application domain . The design knowledge for the domain is encapsulated in a set of heuristic rules organized in terms of deFigure 1: Typical computer-aided design environment. sign strateg...

The development of resistance in response to interferon depends on cellular RNA synthesis and probably also on cellular protein synthesis. The evidence for these requirements is reviewed, as well as the proposal that this evidence indicates the existence of a specific response of the cell to interferon, involving the induced synthesis of an antiviral protein. Direct evidence for such an interpr...

We present the tool QUASY, a quantitative synthesis tool. QUASY takes qualitative and quantitative specifications and automatically constructs a system that satisfies the qualitative specification and optimizes the quantitative specification, if such a system exists. The user can choose between a system that satisfies and optimizes the specifications (a) under all possible environment behaviors...

In this article, we provide a framework for analyzing and interpreting sources that inform a literature review or, as it is more aptly called, a research synthesis. Specifically, using Leech and Onwuegbuzie’s (2007, 2008) frameworks, we delineate how the following four major source types inform research syntheses: talk, observations, drawings/photographs/videos, and documents. We identify 17 qu...

CONTEXT The importance of evidence from randomised trials is now widely recognised, although recruitment is often difficult. Qualitative research has shown promise in identifying the key barriers to recruitment, and interventions have been developed to reduce organisational difficulties and support clinicians undertaking recruitment. OBJECTIVE This article provides an introduction to qualitat...