ABSTRACT
A key question posed by this book is not how far nurses should engage with sociological theory but how far nurses should engage with sociological theory as part of nursing research, and, further, the extent to which that engagement should be reflected in the publication of the findings of nursing research. Assuming a focus on qualitative rather than quantitative nursing research – even if that distinction is becoming less meaningful in an era of the rise of the idea of mixed-methods research – then there is no doubt that sociological theory in some form influences writing and publication in nursing in general, and reports of the nursing research study in particular. As Lipscomb points out in the Introduction to this book, sociological theory remains somewhat backgrounded in the nursing literature. This leads Lipscomb to ask a series of questions that contributors to the current volume attempt to address. Among these questions is one that implicates the nursing journal and, by default, the nursing journal editor, the nursing journal editorial board and the nursing journal peer-reviewer. As gatekeeper and guardian of the nursing genre, the nursing journal editor plays a commanding role in how far a nursing author is permitted to indulge in sociological theorizing within the pages of a given journal. (The reader might like to know that I am the editor of a nursing journal – more on this later.) And to some extent the genre is codified in each nursing journal’s guidelines for authors. Some of these guidelines are technical, others not so much.
