Literature on the combination of qualitative and quantitative research components at the primary empirical study level has recently accumulated exponentially. However, this combination is only rarely discussed and applied at the research synthesis level. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible contribution of mixed methods research to the integration of qualitative and quantitative...

OBJECTIVES To describe the development of the Claim Evaluation Tools, a set of flexible items to measure people's ability to assess claims about treatment effects. SETTING Methodologists and members of the community (including children) in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Norway, the UK and Australia. PARTICIPANTS In the iterative development of the items, we used purposeful sampling of people with t...

In almost all advanced countries of the world, the discourse about the existence or other wise of a feminist research methodology has been live at least for the last few decades. There are argument in favour of and against the existence of such a methodology to be called “Feminist” and its validity. This article criticizes the arguments made by feminist research methodology and maintains that t...

The article deals with the issue of research methodology, illustrating the use of known research methods for new purposes. Questionnaires that originally do not have metric characteristics can be called »handy questionnaires«. In this article, the author is trying to consider the possibilities of their improved scientific usability, which can be primarily ensured by improving their metric chara...

INTRODUCTION Allied health professionals (AHPs) report positive attitudes to using research evidence in clinical practice, yet often lack time, confidence and skills to use, participate in and conduct research. A range of multifaceted strategies including education, mentoring and guidance have been implemented to increase AHPs' use of and participation in research. Emerging evidence suggests th...

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...

In a foreword to Shaping the Future of Care Together, Prime Minister Gordon Brown says that a care and support system reflecting the needs of our times and meeting our rising aspirations is achievable, but 'only if we are prepared to rise to the challenge of radical reform'. A number of initiatives will be needed to meet the challenge of improving social care for the growing older population. B...

Mixed methods research is the use of quantitative and qualitative methods in a single study or series of studies. It is an emergent methodology which is increasingly used by health researchers, especially within health services research. There is a growing literature on the theory, design and critical appraisal of mixed methods research. However, there are few papers that summarize this methodo...

In this article, the authors propose a new framework for understanding and studying heuristics. The authors posit that heuristics primarily serve the purpose of reducing the effort associated with a task. As such, the authors propose that heuristics can be classified according to a small set of effort-reduction principles. The authors use this framework to build upon current models of heuristic...