The Role of Philosophical Tools in Nursing Research

The objective of this article is to illustrate the importance of the role philosophy and its tools play in the designing and undertaking of nursing research and its importance to be understood by the practicing researcher to ensure the selected methodology and the tools used provide the framework for obtaining reliable and valid answers to their research questions. The article discusses the three major paradigms (Positivism, Interpretivism, and Pragmatism) which have characterized much of health-related research together with a set of essential and practical tools with no metaphysical assumptions that will hopefully provide an explicit framework and a nomenclature which can be applied as we proceed through the research process.