title: Conceptual frameworks and terminology in doctoral nursing research.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To define conceptual frameworks and their inherent dichotomies, and integrate them with concomitant concepts to help early nursing doctoral researchers to develop their understanding of and engage with discourse further, so that nursing can demonstrate its ability to contribute to the meta-theoretical debate of doctoral research alongside other practices and theory-based disciplines.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Conceptual frameworks are central to nursing doctoral studies as they map and contextualise the philosophical assumptions of the research in relation to paradigms and ontological, epistemological and methodological foundations. They shape all aspects of the research design and provide a structure for theorising. They can also be a challenge for researchers and are under-discussed in the literature.
  
  
  METHODS
  Literature review.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The key aspects of the conceptual framework debate in terms of objectivist, subjectivist paradigms and the wider paradigm debate, including retroduction and abduction, are reviewed here together with consideration of how these apply to nursing doctoral research.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Conceptual frameworks are pivotal to nursing doctoral research as they clarify and integrate philosophical, methodological and pragmatic aspects of doctoral thesis while helping the profession to be seen as a research-based discipline, comfortable with the language of meta-theoretical debate.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Conceptual frameworks should form the methodological foundation for all nursing doctoral research.
authors.affiliation: Hinchingbrooke NHS Trust, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, UK.
authors.forename: Wendy
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Durham
authors.affiliation: Norfolk and Suffolk Workforce Partnership, UK.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sykes
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education, Anglia Ruskin University, Peterborough, UK.
authors.forename: Stewart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Piper
authors.affiliation: Anglia Ruskin University, Peterborough, UK.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Stokes
mesh_terms: D004511:Education, Nursing, Graduate / Q000458:organization & administration*; D015399:Nursing Research / Q000458:organization & administration*
keywords: conceptual framework; doctoral research; epistemology; nursing; ontology; paradigms; social theory