Understanding Theory and Research Frameworks
 Theories help to:
 Establish a way to think about nursing
phenomena
 Provide a link between concepts
 Clarify the concepts and variables that can be
measured in a research study
 During my research internship with older Black adults,
we asked them to reminisce with us about their lives.
Based upon what was written in the literature, we were
trying to help them become less depressed and
improve life satisfaction through reminiscence.
 I know…this was an unusual study for nursing.
However, my advisor suggested I make note of things
that I found relevant for my own dissertation
research…
 I DID!! Just about everyone I reminisced with spoke
about religiousness and how much it was an
important part of their lives. Every once in a while, I
noticed issues with implications for health
outcomes. One woman in particular said that she
didn’t take her diabetes medicines because “God
didn’t make those medicines!”
 Wow – that’s a big deal. I spoke with my advisor about
working with her on her study and somehow
integrating religiousness. I could just go to the
literature and find a survey that measures religiousness
and then we could just take it from there….
 I searched and searched and searched the literature for a long
time. My literature searches were initially broad and then
became more complex - combining key words to limit my
findings (you might want to remember that for the exam)
 There were surveys but based upon what I know from my own
life experiences, much of what was written on the surveys either
didn’t reflect the experiences of diverse populations; had
wording that could be difficult for research participants to
understand; or didn’t express the complexity of religiousness.
 Soooo….
 I had my research problem: many of the existing
surveys that measure religiousness were not
developed using diverse populations. Therefore, the
content of many of the surveys was not as
representative as they could be. Some surveys were
okay
 Significance of the problem: health disparities
have been increasing among Blacks for the past 40
years. Given that religion can impact health beliefs
and outcomes, having a valid survey that measures
religiousness can help nurses understand how
religiousness affects health beliefs and health
behaviors
 I ended up testing one survey that I thought might be
usable – the Fetzer survey. The purpose of my
research was to test the survey for understandability,
language, and acceptability in a sample of communitydwelling, older Black adults.
 Great. Easy enough. Now……
 How do I even begin to know what part of the survey
to examine??? The survey is huge – it has many
different ways to look at religiousness and many
questions (over 200!!)
 Should I examine all of those questions?
 Are they actually all something I am interested in?
 In my experience, the phenomena that I was
specifically interested in was the state or involvement
with an organized system of practices, beliefs, rituals,
or symbols as they relate to the sacred – this was my
conceptual definition of religiousness .
 Since I was clear on the definition, I needed a way to
find which items on the survey to examine. I needed
a conceptual framework – or a way to think about
the concept or phenomenon of religiousness so that I
could identify the survey items that I was interested
in
 I ended up using A Multidimensional Model of
Religiousness for African Americans (Levin, Taylor, &
Chatters, 1995). The conceptual model is shown on
the next slide. Note: this model might apply to
other ethnic groups as well, but I wanted to be sure I
found one that was tested using African American
research subjects so that I knew it would be valid.
Three dimensions of religiousness
and spirituality in Blacks
Organizational
Religiousness
*church attendance
*church activities
and offices
NonOrganizational
Religiousness
*reading Bible/other
religious books
*prayer (intercessory
and personal)
*listening to religious
programming
*meditation
Subjective
Religiousness
and
Spirituality
*self-rated
religiousness
*importance of
religiousness as a
youth
*perceptions and
attitudes toward
religion
*feeling close to God
 The model shows how the concepts in the
framework are related to one another.
 The model demonstrates how variables relate to
the concept of organizational religiousness.
 The conceptual model shown here is one that
shows a somewhat abstract concept –
religiousness. There are other kinds of
frameworks shown on the next slide
 Middle range theories/frameworks – they are
much more concrete and apply more specifically
to clinical practice
 Frameworks for physiologic studies – provide
concrete descriptions of relationships among
physiologic variables
 By this point, I am sure that some of your heads
are spinning from this idea of frameworks. Our
text gives much more detail but you basically
need to take home the following
understandings:
 Frameworks help researchers to look at or “frame”
a problem
 Researchers can’t assume that they know how to
think about an idea – they rely upon established
theories or models to give them more structure
 Next step? Read Chapter 7, which gives very specific
information, and we will continue to pick this apart
throughout the week.
Alright, let’s get started!!