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Delimiting Family in Syntheses of Research on Childhood Chronic Conditions and Family Life
Author(s) -
Knafl Kathleen,
Leeman Jennifer,
Havill Nancy,
Crandell Jamie,
Sandelowski Margarete
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
family process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.011
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1545-5300
pISSN - 0014-7370
DOI - 10.1111/famp.12101
Subject(s) - salience (neuroscience) , relevance (law) , psychology , intersection (aeronautics) , conceptual framework , family life , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , sociology , social science , engineering , political science , law , gender studies , aerospace engineering
Synthesis of family research presents unique challenges to investigators who must delimit what will be included as a family study in the proposed review. In this paper, the authors discuss the conceptual and pragmatic challenges of conducting systematic reviews of the literature on the intersection between family life and childhood chronic conditions. A proposed framework for delimiting the family domain of interest is presented. The framework addresses both topical salience and level of relevance and provides direction to future researchers, with the goal of supporting the overall quality of family research synthesis efforts. For users of synthesis studies, knowledge of how investigators conceptualize the boundaries of family research is important contextual information for understanding the limits and applicability of the results.