Different paradigms in a new research domain - The case of nursing research on diabetes in Sweden

The aim of this study was to examine doctoral theses written by nurses on the same subject, namely diabetes. The five theses were published during three years. The text analysis emphasized the purposes, theoretical framing, methods for collection and analyzing the data, ways of presenting the texts and, finally, the references in the five theses. The findings indicate that the authors make use of different paradigms. Experimental approach was used in some theses and one thesis was based on grounded theory. Two theses could be said to be more concise than the others because they made use of only one technique each-physiological measurements and an open-ended interview. The remainder used of a number of methods-in other words, they were eclectic in approach. The conclusion is that there is a freedom for nurse researcher to affiliate to different scientific traditions inside academia-the two in question here are biomedical research and interpretative traditions inside social science. The author encourage all researchers inside the nursing domain to subject herself to criticism and reflection to the same extent as she analyzes other people or phenomena in order to increase the epistemological awareness of the use of research tools, perspectives and theories.