Research Vignettes Research Articles

Assessing and Enhancing the Research Consent Capacity of Children and Youth

This study examined the capacity of 291 4th, 7th, and 10th graders, as well as college students, to understand their rights in research and the extent to which this capacity can be enhanced following exposure to The Research Participants' Bill of Rights. Comprehension of the research procedures, risks and benefits, voluntary nature of participation, and confidentiality protections improved in all grades following exposure to the Bill of Rights. Fourth graders performed poorer than older respondents when asked to match rights definitions, identify true and false statements about specific research rights, and label and recognize rights violations in hypothetical research vignettes. Data suggest that 7th graders, when compared to older participants, are still struggling to understand their veto power over adult permission, their right to be protected from harm, and to be informed about research procedures and results. Overall, 10th graders' responses did not differ from adults'. Implications of the findings for informed consent procedures are discussed.

Voluntary Assent in Biomedical Research With Adolescents: A Comparison of Parent and Adolescent Views

An informed consent and voluntary assent in biomedical research with adolescents is contingent on a variety of factors, including adolescent and parent perceptions of research risk, benefit, and decision-making autonomy. Thirty-seven adolescents with asthma and their parents evaluated a high or low aversion form of a pediatric asthma research vignette and provided an enrollment decision; their perceptions of family influence over the participation decision; and evaluations of risk, aversion, benefit, and burden of study procedures. Adolescents and their parents agreed on research participation decisions 74% of the time, yet both claimed ultimate responsibility for the participation decision. Both rated most study procedures as significantly more aversive than risky. Parents were more likely to rate aspects of the hypothetical study as beneficial and to provide higher risk ratings for procedures. Disagreements concerning research participation decisions and decision-making autonomy have implications for the exercise of voluntary assent in biomedical research.

The application of vignettes in social and nursing research.

The aim of this paper is to review the potential for, and the limitations of, the use of vignettes in research that seeks an understanding of people's attitudes, perceptions and beliefs, particularly with regard to sensitive subjects such as health care. Vignettes, in the form of text or pictures presented to research participants to prompt responses to interview questions, are widely used throughout the social sciences although their use in nursing research is less developed. REVIEW FOCUS: This review paper begins by addressing the differences between vignettes and real life processes. The following sections explore some of the practical advantages and pitfalls of using vignettes in social and nursing research. The paper demonstrates how vignettes can be very useful research tools yielding valuable data when studying people's attitudes, perceptions and beliefs in social and nursing research.

Psychology of the scientist: LXXX. Attitudes regarding authorship issues in psychological publications.

The purpose of this article is to explore empirically issues and attitudes surrounding the assignment of credit for authorship in psychological research. A survey consisting of research tasks, vignettes, and questions relating to collaborations between faculty and students was completed by 203 individuals (23.3% response rate) from a national, random sample of faculty and graduate students. Analysis indicated that tasks related to manuscript writing, developing research ideas, and research design were important criteria for assigning credit of authorship. Status, seniority, and data collection were rated as unimportant to the assignment of credit. The issues surrounding collaborations between faculty and students were also examined.

'I wanna tell you a story': Exploring the application of vignettes in qualitative research with children and young people

Few methodological papers exist which examine the use of vignettes within qualitative research and more specifically, with children and young people. The paper will briefly discuss the application of vignettes within quantitative and qualitative research traditions derived from the available literature before outlining the major theoretical and methodological issues relating to the use of this technique in social research. Using empirical examples of young people's responses to a selected vignette, we then go on to explore the various benefits of vignettes that can ensue when employing this technique in isolation or as part of a multi-method approach. This discussion concludes with an exploration of how vignettes can be harnessed to engage young people, particularly in the discussion of sensitive topics, whilst enabling them to retain a high level of control over the research process.

Using vignettes in awareness and attitudinal research

This article describes the use of vignettes, or hypothetical scenarios, with semi-structured follow-up questions. The vignette approach offers a number of benefits, particularly for eliciting data on awareness and attitudes, including: (1) flexibility that allows the researcher to design an instrument uniquely responsive to specific topical foci; (2) enjoyment and creativity for the informant; and (3) depersonalization that encourages an informant to think beyond his or her own circumstances, an important feature for sensitive topics or for illuminating future use patterns of services. In this article, we illustrate the vignette approach by examining the awareness and attitudes of older adults toward the use of formal community-based or home-health services. Although researchers generally acknowledge the importance of understanding informants' awareness of and attitudes toward formal services, these factors are often overlooked in formal service utilization literature, possibly owing to a lack of methodological tools. By employing the vignette approach, we avoided prestuctured questionnaires that often contain investigator bias while encouraging topical focus unavailable in most 'grand tour questions'. We provide a description of and evidence for how this vignette approach circumvented frequently encountered problems in awareness and attitudinal research, while more richly capturing the voices of the informants.

Methodological issues surrounding the use of vignettes in qualitative research

Health and social care provision is increasingly complex, involving different professional groups whilst also encompassing a large number of different agencies. Each group and agency has its own underpinning philosophy and language, all of which contribute to the complexity of interprofessional working. Vignettes have the potential to collect data from each group and agency with minimal use of resources and disruption. This paper considers that potential by using as an exemplar a study which explored the understanding of role and its impact on interprofessional collaboration through the perceptions of district nurses and social workers. The trustworthiness of vignettes, in particular their rigour as a data collection tool, is explored to support their use in qualitative research in the field of interprofessional working.

The role of clinical vignettes in rapid ethnographic research: A folk taxonomy of diarrhoea in Thailand

This paper presents the findings of a rapid ethnographic research methodology used to investigate the beliefs and practices of rural mothers and grandmothers concerning diarrhoeal diseases in children under five years of age in Khon Kaen Province, Northeast Thailand. The multi-phase study used a combination of focus groups and clinical vignettes, semi-formal questionnaires and open-ended interviews. The efficiency of the combination of focus groups and clinical vignettes in obtaining an understanding of the important areas of belief in a short period of time is discussed, as well as the importance of quantifying and validating this information using other methodologies. A folk taxonomy of diarrhoea and its management is presented, and the implications of this for health planners is discussed. Most diarrhoea in children under one year is perceived to be su, a normal developmental stage which requires no treatment. As su is not considered to be diarrhoea, health messages concerning diarrhoea are not considered by care-givers. The labelling of a child with diarrhoea as having su results in a delay in help-seeking, a risk factor for dehydration. Thus su needs to be taken into consideration in health education campaigns. The informants demonstrated little understanding of the role of infection in diarrhoea, nor of the role of personal and domestic hygiene for its prevention, nor of the place and function of ORS, highlighting important areas where education is still necessary.

The clinical nurse's role in informed consent.

Semistructured interviews were obtained with 27 master's-prepared nurses to investigate the nurse's role in informed consent. Four treatment vignettes and four research vignettes were used to clarify elements of informed consent that respondents thought were necessary for consent to be informed and the roles that nurses assumed in obtaining consent from patients. Respondents viewed that informed consent was a process that occurs over time and that the consent was more informed when patients had prior preparation. Five roles were identified in which nurses have assumed active involvement: 1) watchdog to monitor informed consent situations, 2) advocate to mediate on behalf of patients, 3) resource person to provide information on alternatives, 4) coordinator to preserve an open, friendly atmosphere for discussion, and 5) facilitator to clarify differences between involved parties.