title: Three phases of research in validating nursing diagnoses.
abstract: The purposes of this three-phase project consisting of concept analyses, nurse expert validation, and client validation were: identification of nursing definitions of anxiety and fear, validation of defining characteristics of the diagnoses by nurse experts, differentiation of the diagnoses by nurse experts, and validation of the nursing diagnosis anxiety by clients. The nurse expert sample consisted of 233 professional nurses, and the client sample consisted of 69 adult clients. Results include agreement on two critical defining characteristics of anxiety by nurse experts and clients, the differentiation of anxiety and fear by nurse experts, the suggestion of a fear-anxiety syndrome in the literature and by nurse experts and clients, and the suggestion by nurse experts that anxiety be defined using levels of anxiety. Recommendation for changes in the nursing diagnosis anxiety are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Northern Illinois University, School of Nursing, USA.
authors.forename: G G
authors.initials: GG
authors.lastname: Whitley
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001007:Anxiety / Q000451:nursing* / Q000523:psychology; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology; D009733:Nursing Diagnosis / Q000592:standards*; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research / Q000379:methods*; D009742:Nursing Theory; D015203:Reproducibility of Results