A descriptive study of effect-size reporting in research reviews.

AIM: To describe effect-size reporting in research reviews completed in support of evidence-based practice in nursing. BACKGROUND: Many research reviews report nurses' critical appraisal of level, quality and overall strength of evidence available to address clinical questions. Several studies of research-review quality suggest effect-size information would be useful to include in these reviews, but none focused on reviewers' attention to effect sizes. DESIGN: Descriptive. METHODS: One hundred and four reviews indexed in CINAHL as systematic reviews and published from July 2012-February 2014 were examined. Papers were required to be peer-reviewed, written in English, contain an abstract and have at least one nurse author. Reviews were excluded if they did not use critical appraisal methods to address evidence of correlation, prediction or effectiveness. Data from remaining papers (N = 73) were extracted by three or more independent coders using a structured coding form and detailed codebook. Data were stored, viewed and analysed using Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheet functions. RESULTS: Sixteen percent (n = 12) of the sample contained effect-size information. Of the 12, six included all the effect-size information recommended by APA guidelines. Independent of completeness of reporting, seven contained discussion of effect sizes in the paper, but none included effect-size information in abstracts. CONCLUSION: Research reviews available to practicing nurses often fail to include information needed to accurately assess how much improvement may result from implementation of evidence-based policies, programs, protocols or practices. Manuscript reviewers are urged to hold authors to APA standards for reporting/discussing effect-size information in both primary research reports and research reviews.

Graphics for dissemination of meta-analyses to staff nurses.

Meta-analytic findings can be useful to nurses seeking research results to guide practice, but graphics used by meta-analysts take time to master. Simpler displays can be created by staff development educators if they understand commonly used meta-analytic displays. For instance, simplified versions of 'forest plots', a common metaphoric display can be created to introduce staff nurses to meta-analytic findings published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and similar databases.

Effectiveness of an intervention for disseminating Cochrane Reviews to nurses.

Disseminating research findings to clinicians can be a challenging task. In this study, researchers tested the effectiveness of disseminating summaries of systematic reviews to clinicians. The findings suggest that these summaries are well-accepted by nurses and increase their knowledge of research findings.

Changes in REM-sleep percentage over the adult lifespan.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To resolve inconsistencies in previously reported changes in percentage of rapid eye movement sleep (REM%) over the adult lifespan and to identify gaps in available information about adults' REM sleep. DESIGN: A research synthesis approach specifically designed to detect nonlinear change. Cubic B smoothing splines were fitted to scatterplots generated from reported means and variance for REM%, REM minutes, and total sleep time. PARTICIPANTS: 382 English-language research reports provided REM% values for 4171 subjects; REM minutes values for 2722 subjects; and values of total sleep time for 5037 subjects. Samples were composed of subjects described by authors as normal or healthy. Mean ages of samples ranged from 18.0 to 91.7 years. SETTING: University research center. INTERVENTIONS: N/A. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Two coders extracted information. Intercoder reliability was above cutoffs for excellent. Authors often failed to describe screening procedures used to determine subjects' health status. Few results were reported separately for women. The functional relationship between age and REM% was essentially linear over much of the adult lifespan, decreasing about 0.6% per decade. The best estimate of when REM% ceased its small linear decline was the mid-70s, after which time a small increase in REM% was observed due to REM minutes increasing while total sleep time declined. CONCLUSIONS: Ability to detect both linear and nonlinear change in REM%, REM minutes, and total sleep time over the lifespan was useful for resolving inconsistent findings about the existence of changes in REM% with aging. This approach to research synthesis also facilitated identification of ages for which little normative information about REM sleep was available.

Effectiveness of an intervention for disseminating Cochrane reviews to nurses.

Disseminating research findings to clinicians can be a challenging task. In this study, researchers tested the effectiveness of disseminating summaries of systematic reviews to clinicians. The findings suggest that these summaries are well-accepted by nurses and increase their knowledge of research findings.

Brief reports for disseminating systematic reviews to nurses.

Much has been written about the importance of using research findings to guide nursing practice. How to best disseminate those findings to nurses remains a challenge. In many clinical settings, nurses interested in research utilization and evidence-based practice retrieve, review, and integrate knowledge from research reports to guide decisions about best practices. Major barriers to this approach, however, are staff nurses' lack of time, expertise, and resources for this process. One approach to overcoming these barriers is to disseminate the results of systematic research reviews directly to nurses in the form of brief reports, written in an easy-to-understand style, and sent via e-mail. This article describes the development of brief reports as a strategy for disseminating the results of systematic reviews to staff nurses. To demonstrate the use of brief reports for this purpose, we chose a systematic review published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Presenting research to clinicians: strategies for writing about research findings.

Research is of little value to clinical practice if the findings are not appropriately integrated into that practice. While publishing the results of research is essential for translating findings into practice, Marilyn Oermann and colleagues suggest that work is not done until the findings are disseminated for use by clinicians and others who need the research results to guide their practice

Comparison of Medical Subject Headings and text-word searches in MEDLINE to retrieve studies on sleep in healthy individuals.

OBJECTIVE: The objective was to investigate the performance of two search strategies in the retrieval of primary research papers containing descriptive information on the sleep of healthy people from MEDLINE. METHODOLOGY: Two search strategies-one based on the use of only Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the second based on text-word searching-were evaluated as to their specificity and sensitivity in retrieving a set of relevant research papers published in the journal Sleep from 1996 to 2001 that were preselected by a hand search. RESULTS: The subject search provided higher specificity than the text-word search (66% and 47%, respectively) but lower sensitivity (78% for the subject search versus 88% for the text-word search). Each search strategy gave some unique relevant hits. CONCLUSIONS: The two search strategies complemented each other and should be used together for maximal retrieval. No combination of MeSH terms could provide comprehensive yet reasonably precise retrieval of relevant articles. The text-word searching had sensitivity and specificity comparable to the subject search. In addition, use of text words "normal," "healthy," and "control" in the title or abstract fields to limit the final sets provided an efficient way to increase the specificity of both search strategies.

Individual determinants of research utilization: a systematic review.

CONTEXT: In order to design interventions that increase research use in nursing, it is necessary to have an understanding of what influences research use. OBJECTIVE: To report findings on a systematic review of studies that examine individual characteristics of nurses and how they influence the utilization of research. SEARCH STRATEGY: A survey of published articles in English that examine the influence of individual factors on the research utilization behaviour of nurses, without restriction of the study design, from selected computerized databases and hand searches. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Articles had to measure one or more individual determinants of research utilization, measure the dependent variable (research utilization), and evaluate the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The studies also had to indicate the direction of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables, report a P-value and the statistic used, and indicate the magnitude of the relationship. RESULTS: Six categories of potential individual determinants were identified: beliefs and attitudes, involvement in research activities, information seeking, professional characteristics, education and other socio-economic factors. Research design, sampling, measurement, and statistical analysis were examined to evaluate methodological quality. Methodological problems surfaced in all of the studies and, apart from attitude to research, there was little to suggest that any potential individual determinant influences research use. CONCLUSION: Important conceptual and measurement issues with regard to research utilization could be better addressed if research in the area were undertaken longitudinally by multi-disciplinary teams of researchers.

Outcomes research: an essential component of the advanced practice nurse role.

More research is needed that focuses on the effectiveness of nursing interventions in clinical settings. Advanced practice nurses are in the best position to conduct these studies, given their clinical expertise, access to subjects, master's-level research education, and need to demonstrate the effectiveness of their own care practices. This article describes how to develop outcomes studies and to use and disseminate the findings. Advanced practice nurses are encouraged to develop and replicate outcomes studies and to broadly disseminate findings to build the evidence base needed to support advanced practice in nursing.

Sleep and aging.

Synthesis of studies of sleep and aging show major increases occur in nighttime awakening and major decreases occur in sleep depth over the life span. Fatigue and drowsiness during the day, with increased napping, and earlier bedtimes, are also prevalent in the elderly. Interventions that impact these sleep variables, as well as sleep variables that change less dramatically, are needed. All indications are that the promotion of restorative sleep and daytime well-being in older adults will continue to be an important part of nursing practice affecting even more people as the population ages. Although nurses have only begun to identify and study interventions that promote sleep in nursing environments, nursing is in a position to make major contributions to the health and well-being of older adults who experience sleep disruption, especially sleep disruptions secondary to illness and aging.