Background  Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and continued breastfeeding up to 2 years or more is a desirable approach for infant’s nutrition. A mother's breastfeeding empowerment is considered an important factor in promoting breastfeeding and identifying its facilitating factors can contribute to the development of effective policies and intervention. This study with a qualita...

In the opening of his essay, “Disciplines of Inquiry in Education,” Shulman makes two important points. The first is that, because education has been tied to psychology as a foundation discipline, it has adopted, from psychology, the scientific, experimental method of research. The second is that methodology determines the kinds of questions a researcher is able, or at least is likely, to ask (...

This paper discusses the issue of equity in the distribution of ARV drugs in the Malawi health system. Malawi is one of the countries most severely affected by HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. It is also one of the poorest countries in the world. ARV drugs are expensive.The Malawi government, with assistance from the Global Fund on Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV/AIDS, started providing free ARV drug...

Writing the proposal for a qualitative research methodology study is a double challenge because of the emergent nature of qualitative research design and because a methodology study entails describing a process to produce a process. How the authors addressed this challenge is shown in the annotated text of the grant proposal--"Analytic Techniques for Qualitative Metasynthesis"--funded by the Na...

There are several reasons why qualitative research is a suitable means to answer a number of relevant nursing research issues. However, as a research methodology it is not without its critics. This article debates the importance of qualitative research to nursing knowledge and uses the literature and practice experience to evaluate its contribution.

This second article of the series "An Overview of Research Designs Relevant to Nursing" presents qualitative research designs. Phenomenological, ground theory, ethnography, narrative inquiry, and other related qualitative-related research methodologies are described. In addition, the importance of qualitative research as groundwork for quantitative studies is discussed. This link between qualit...