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Introduction
Published in Martin Lipscomb, Exploring Evidence-based Practice, 2015
In Chapter 10, John Paley describes the disputed and contentious place of qualitative research in the hierarchy of evidence, nurse education and, by implication, EBP. Like Bernie in Chapter 9, John recognises that EBP is seen by some as privileging quantitative ways of knowing and, again, this privileging has been considered ‘an arbitrary imposition’. John further notes that powerful voices in nursing have and are seeking to raise the status of qualitative research to match that accorded to quantitative work and, in this process, weaknesses (real and imagined) in quantitative experimental design are identified and emphasised. John, on the other hand, persuasively argues that, regardless of the stridency of calls favouring qualitative inquiry, it is unclear whether ‘qualitative evidence should be “on an equal footing” with evidence derived from quantitative and experimental designs’. Furthermore, insofar as statistical tests and experimental quantitative designs strive to limit the risk of inferential error, the absence of similar procedures and protocols in qualitative studies cannot but subvert claims regarding the status and use value of those findings. Indeed, unwelcome though the observation may be, it remains the case that, without such procedures and protocols, ‘there is no way of discriminating between legitimate inference in qualitative research and various forms of cognitive bias: observer expectancy effects, belief bias, illusory correlation, availability cascade, selective perception, congruence bias, motivated reasoning, or outright wishful thinking’. To understand how and why nursing has become attached to qualitative inquiry, John notes that for ‘the past thirty years, methodological discussion in qualitative health research … has been subordinated to the requirements of postgraduate study’. This subordination is important. It has imposed constraints on the methodologies and methods that are available to students and, thus, in order that studies can be completed by individuals with minimal resources in short time periods, postgraduate nursing researchers have found it expedient to undertake small sample interview-based studies, which limit themselves to retrospective descriptions of the participants’ experience and the ‘meaning’ they attach to experience. The philosophical justifications of this approach are, however, weak. And, in addition, the social psychology literature undermines the way in which ‘meaning’ is interpreted in most nursing qualitative studies. John’s argument raises serious and awkward questions that should, if given the attention they deserve, prompt fresh thinking among educators, researchers and the consumers (readers) of research.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy research viewed in the public domain: What makes headlines?
Published in Brain Injury, 2020
Daniel I. Wolfson, Andrew W. Kuhn, Zachary Y. Kerr, Benjamin L. Brett, Aaron M. Yengo-Kahn, Gary S. Solomon, Scott L. Zuckerman
In the context of sport-related concussion (SRC), the study of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and neurodegenerative sequelae in former athletes has received international scientific and media attention. Based mostly on case reports from boxers and convenience samples of American football players, the public has largely accepted a causal link between contact sports and CTE (1–3). This may be due, in part, to heavily publicized accounts of CTE in prominent, retired National Football League (NFL) players (4). In a survey of 1,000 Americans, 83% thought that playing football “certainly” or “probably” causes long-term brain injuries; however, the scientific literature suggests that the overall mortality rate of retired professional football players is lower than or similar to the general population (5–8). It is possible the public has succumbed to the availability cascade, where individual, widely publicized examples readily available to the public receive disproportionate attention and supersede the findings of established empirical data (9,10). As several authors have asserted, it seems that many people have departed from the time-tested, measured, scientific approach to addressing a complex problem (11–17).
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy in sports: a historical and narrative review
Published in Developmental Neuropsychology, 2018
The third factor is a social psychological concept, and has been termed “the availability cascade” by Kuran and Sunstein (1999). They defined the availability cascade as “a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance.” Essentially, the notion is simply to repeat something long enough and it becomes “true.” I suspect political organizations have been aware of this for decades.