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A philosophical account of interventions and causal representation in nursing research : a discussion paper

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Author

Summary, in English

BACKGROUND: Representing is about theories and theory formation. Philosophy of science has a long-standing interest in representing. At least since Ian Hacking's modern classic Representing and Intervening (1983) analytical philosophers have struggled to combine that interest with a study of the roles of intervention studies. With few exceptions this focus of philosophy of science has been on physics and other natural sciences. In particular, there have been few attempts to analyse the use of the notion of intervention in other disciplines where intervention studies are important, such as in nursing research. One unintended consequence of this is that the relations between representing and intervening tend to be less understood outside the natural sciences. OBJECTIVES AND DESIGN: This article highlights a number of possible topics on which nursing science and analytic philosophy of science can fruitfully interact. The basic idea is simple. Building on a characterisation of interventions in terms of (i) what is intervened on and (ii) with respect to what, we suggest that interventions in nursing research typically are a blend of varieties belonging to the three dimensions of agency, epistemology, and ontology. The details of the blend determine the relation of the particular intervention study to traditional representational categories such as inductivism and hypothetico-deductive method, and have a bearing on its explanatory power and other more theory independent features of research as well. The framework we suggest should be relevant for nurse researchers who want to adopt a more general and analytically entrenched perspective on representing and intervening than the methodological boundaries in nursing research typically allow.

Publishing year

2009

Language

English

Pages

547-556

Publication/Series

International Journal of Nursing Studies

Volume

46

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Nursing
  • Philosophy

Keywords

  • Intervention
  • Induction
  • Hypothetico-deductive method
  • Explanation
  • Philosophy of science
  • Theory

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1873-491X