AIM This article aims to identify the contributions of qualitative research to evidence-based practice in nursing. BACKGROUND Qualitative research dates back to the 1920s and 1930s, when anthropologists and sociologists used qualitative research methods to study human phenomena in naturalistic settings and from a holistic viewpoint. Afterwards, other subject matters, including nursing, adopte...

without any doubt, one of the strategies to achieve knowledge-based economy is the transfer of high technologies and turning them into a competitive stable advantage for companies. technology readiness levels, as a determining factor for high-tech transfer, has not been taken into consideration in recent studies. in this paper the author seeks to identify and prioritize factors affecting the tr...

The paper proposed a linguistic PROMETHEE approach for making investment portfolio decision. First, we both consider quantitative and qualitative information of each stock and use 2-tuple linguistic value for experts to express their opinions to obtain qualitative information with respect to all evaluation criteria. Then, the transformation method of 2-tuple linguistic variable is applied to ag...

Background: The knowledge and use of qualitative description as a qualitative research approach in health services research is limited. The aim of this article is to discuss the potential benefits of a qualitative descriptive approach, to identify its strengths and weaknesses and to provide examples of use. Discussion: Qualitative description is a useful qualitative method in much medical resea...

Cognitive developmental psychology often describes children’s growing qualitative understanding of the physical world. Physics educators may be able to use the relevant methods to advantage for characterizing changes in students’ qualitative reasoning. Siegler developed the “rule assessment” method for characterizing levels of qualitative understanding for two factor situations (e.g., volume an...

Stochastic qualitative reasoning is an effective way to grasp approximate behavior of complex systems such as air conditioning systems . The appropriateness of the stochastic qualitative model can be identified by comparing the behavior derived by reasoning that is represented as the transition of states with the actual measured behavior . Since the states are derived based on all conceivable c...

In this paper, a qualitative and a quantitative risk assessment methods for urban natural gas pipeline network are proposed. The qualitative method is comprised of an index system, which includes a causation index, an inherent risk index, a consequence index and their corresponding weights. The quantitative method consists of a probability assessment, a consequences analysis and a risk evaluati...

stress and residual stress are the main problems in the operating performance of materials. they are the principal causes of material failure and can affect life time of component. however measurement or predictions of them are typically difficult. two common non-destructive methods, x-ray diffraction and ultrasound are not reliable methods for subsurface residual stress measurements and destru...