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Abstract
Purpose: To assess author credentials of quantitative research in nursing, the composition of the research teams, and the disciplinary focus of the theories tested.
Design: Nursing Research, Western Journal of Nursing Research, and Journal of Advanced Nursing were selected for this descriptive study; 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010 were included. The final sample consisted of 484 quantitative research articles.
Findings: From 1990 to 2010, there was an increase in first authors holding doctoral degrees, research from other countries, and funding. Solo authorship decreased; multi-authorship and multidisciplinary teams increased. Theories tested were mostly from psychology; the testing of nursing theory was modest. Multidisciplinary research far outdistanced interdisciplinary research. Conclusions: Quantitative nursing research can be characterized as multidisciplinary (distina theories from different disciplines) rather than disciplinespecific to nursing. Interdisciplinary (theories synthesized from different disciplines) research has been conducted minimally.
Clinical Relevance: This study provides information about the growth of the scientific knowledge base of nursing, which has implications for praaice.
Key words
Disciplinary-specific, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary research in nursing
The science of nursing began to take shape nearly a half century ago, beginning with the historical development of nursing conceptual models as described by Fawcett (2005) and the seminal work describing the disciplinary focus of nursing by Donaldson and Crowley (1978). Yet, in 2002, Whelton's analysis suggested that nursing is a multifaceted discipline in which the science is ambiguous.
One reason that the science of nursing remains ambiguous might be that nursing leaders continue to view the science from different perspeaives. For example, Grady (2008), Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, has stated that "Nursing science by its very nature is interdisciplinary..." (p. 276), and Gennaro (2012) viewed nursing scholarship, which includes nursing science, as being interdisciplinary and transformative. In contrast, Barrett (2002) and Fawcett (2000a) have argued that nursing science is discipline-specific knowledge developed through theoretical research done within the framework of nursing conceptual models. As stated by Barrett (2002), research conducted by nurses that tests or generates theories from other disciplines does not produce nursing science, but contributes to the knowledge of other fields. Others have argued that theory borrowed from other disciplines can advance the science of nursing by strengthening the potential for interpreting and understanding human phenomena (Hayne, 1992;...