The Personal Adjustment of Chronically Ill Old People Under Home Care

Uncontested categories: the use of race and ethnicity variables in nursing research

“…A research participant's race or ethnicity was a criterion for sample selection in 7% ( n = 11) of the 153 articles that mentioned race or ethnicity. Six studies, published in 1952, 1970, 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995, purposely selected only ‘white’ subjects (Mack 1952; Bullock and Johnson 1970; Censullo, Lester and Hoffman 1985; Metzger and Therrien 1990; Papa 1980; Ziemer, Cooper and Pigeon 1995). Two studies intentionally restricted their samples to ‘Negroes’ (Lowe 1970) and ‘African‐Americans’ (Picot 1995); two studies included only ‘Hispanics’ (Walker et al.…”

“…Rationales for restricting study samples to one particular racial or ethnic group varied. Three of the 11 studies that used race and/or ethnicity as a sample criterion limited the sample to a select racial group (in these examples, to ‘whites’) in order to create as ‘homogenous’ a sample as possible (for example, Mack 1952; Lowe 1970). This was achieved by controlling for the ‘confounding influences of … ethnocultural background’ (Metzger and Therrien 1990, 199), thus implying that all ‘whites’ have similar enthnocultural backgrounds.…”

The Rehabilitation Nursing Foundation Celebrates 20+ Years of Funded Research

“…For the first time, a large proportion of soldiers had survived wars with disabilities and chronic conditions (e.g., amputations and spine and head injuries) and lived into older adulthood. In the first issue of Nursing Research , an article on the adjustment of older adults with chronic illnesses who were receiving home care was published (Mack, 1952). Nearly 10 years elapsed before an article described a study more directly related to rehabilitation nursing; this article discussed the development of an objective measure of decubitus ulcers (Verhonick, 1961).…”