Methods for Biobehavioral and Physiological Research in Nursing

From genomics to epigenomics, immunity to immunodeficiency, and apoptosis to cancer, nurse scientists are exploring the biological underpinnings of health and disease across the lifespan. As in all good research, the questions asked drive the choice of methods. For nurse scientists who seek to explore etiology, this often means performing basic and sophisticated laboratory techniques, interpreting and conducting biological assays, and incorporating or developing new technologies. While the questions that drive explorations of etiology often begin at the bedside, their answers frequently are found at the bench. For this special issue, Methods for Biobehavioral and Physiological Research in Nursing, we include 11 articles selected from the many excellent manuscripts submitted that together provide a powerful picture of the state of the art in biological research in nursing. In these articles, authors discuss how to choose an appropriate method to address a challenging research question, how to ensure that the method is performed accurately and recognize if it is not, and how to translate findings to improve patient outcomes. Included throughout are theoretical perspectives, practice exemplars, and innovation. I hope that in reading these 11 articles, you encounter research strategies that resonate with you and motivate you to continue to raise the bar for nursing science. The issue begins with three articles that review methodologies frequently utilized by nurse scientists. The first, by Morrison and Downs, provides a concise review of immunocytochemistry, enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA), and flow cytometry and concludes with a discussion of futuristic immunological methods such as high-throughput tissue microarray technology and hybrid nanotechnologies. The authors finish with clearly identified implications for nursing. Next, Voss et al. explore the rising field of proteomics: the study of an organism’s proteins, specifically in this article via the measurement of accessible biomarkers. Measuring accessible biomarkers allows researchers and clinicians to gain insight into the status of a patient’s health or the progression of his disease. The authors include a description of their pilot study highlighting the potential for utilizing urine proteomics for the noninvasive analysis of biomarkers of interest in nursing research. The last of this group of articles, by authors Hanneman et al., provides the reader with a nuts and bolts discussion of how to evaluate the validity of ELISAs, in this case saliva assays. This review is a must read for researchers just beginning to explore performing any bioassay not only ELISAs. It is also an excellent reminder for all of us that without understanding the bioassays we run, we will not be able to recognize when errors occur or stand up for the accuracy of our data. The next eight articles in the issue present original research wherein the authors have utilized a specific physiological or biobehavioral method to address a research question. I chose to organize these eight manuscripts from a lifespan perspective, beginning with those using a methodology to address research or care involving infants, then young and older adults, and finally, the frail elderly. This lifespan approach demonstrates the broad applicability of physiological and biobehavioral research to nursing science. The section begins with an article by Foreman et al. In their report, the authors identify the clinical need to monitor preterm infants’ real-time brain function and describe the specifics and utility of their noninvasive approach. The manuscript is anchored by a presentation of their research using the methodology on 16 preterm infants, including the pitfalls, the lessons learned, and the improvements to the methodology that followed. Next, Pridham et al. present a remarkable study in which they used multidimensional graphical analysis to identify patterns of variables that may improve clinicians’ ability to predict growth outcomes in extremely low, very low, or low birth weight infants. The graphical representations that resulted are rich with details gathered from 28 preterm infants. The third article in the group, by Knobel et al., describes the use of infrared thermography to measure and visualize surface temperatures and thermal patterns in neonates during their first month of life. The authors describe how information gathered with this methodology can be used to evaluate in vivo tissue