Delimiting Family in Syntheses of Research on Childhood Chronic Conditions and Family Life

• Author: Kathleen Knafl,Margarete Sandelowski,Jamie Crandell,Nancy Havill,Jennifer Leeman
• Date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12101
• Published date: 01 March 2015

Delimiting Family in Syntheses of Research on

Childhood Chronic Conditions and Family Life

KATHLEEN KNAFL*

JENNIFER LEEMAN*

NANCY HAVILL*

JAMIE CRANDELL*

MARGARETE SANDELOWSKI*

Synthesis of family research presents unique challenges to investigators who must deli-

mit what will be included as a family study in the proposed review. In this paper, the

authors discuss the conceptual and pragmatic challenges of conducting systematic reviews

of the literature on the intersection between family life and childhood chroni c conditions. A

proposed framework for delimiting the family domain of interest is presented. The frame-

work addresses both topical salience and level of relevance and provides direction to future

researchers, with the goal of supporting the overall quality of family research synthesis

efforts. For users of synthesis studies, knowledge of how investigators conceptualize the

boundaries of family research is important contextual information for understanding the

limits and applicability of the results.

Keywords: Research Synthesis; Family Research; Childhood Chronic Conditions

Fam Proc 54:173–184, 2015

The investigation of the intersection of family life and childhood chronic conditions has

been an especially fertile area of inquiry for researchers from multiple disciplines.

Varying considerably in their conceptual and methodological underpinnings, studies have

addressed varied topics, including the contribution of family factors to child adaptation,

the nature and predictors of family response to the child’s condition, and the testing of

interventions to improve child and family outcomes. Despite the breadth and quantity of

this research, investigators continue to seek more precise answers to the question of which

factors contribute to optimal outcomes for children and their families.

The volume and diversity of research on family and childhood chronic conditions make

it difficult to assess the body of knowledge in the field, and state with confidence “this is

what we know about these children and families.” The quantity of work in the field points

to the importance of undertaking syntheses of this rich but unwieldy body of research and

provides an ample data base for doing so.

The significant contributions of research synthesis studies to the scientific basis for

practice have received increasing recognition (Cooper, 2010b; Hardin & Thomas, 2010;

Pope, Mays, & Popay, 2007; Sandelowski, Voils, Crandell, & Leeman, 2013), but synthes is

of family research presents unique challenges to investigators who must delimit what will

be included as a “family study” in the synthesis. This paper is grounded in our experiences

*School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kathleen Knafl, School of Nursing, Uni-

versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2810 Carrington Hall Campus Box 7460, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-

7460. E-mail: kknafl@email.unc.edu.

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Family Process, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2015 ©2014 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12101