Chronic illness experience: insights from a metastudy.
Concurrent with the recent enthusiasm for qualitative research in the health fields, an energetic call for methods by which to synthesize the knowledge has been generated on various substantive topics. Although there is an emerging literature on meta-analysis and metasynthesis, many authors overestimate the simplicity of such approaches and erroneously assume that useful knowledge can be synthesized from limited collections of study reports without a thorough analysis of their theoretical, methodological, and contextual foundations and features. In this article, the authors report some of the insights obtained from an extensive and exhaustive metastudy of qualitative studies of chronic illness experience. Their findings reveal the complexities inherent not only in any phenomenon of interest to health researchers but also in the study of how we have come to know what we think we know about it.
Thorne
Sally
S
University of British Columbia School of Nursing.
Paterson
Barbara
B
Acorn
Sonia
S
Canam
Connie
C
Joachim
Gloria
G
Jillings
Carol
C
D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D012803:Sick Role