Virtual text and the growth of meaning in qualitative analysis

OBJECTIVE: NA DESIGN: NA SETTING: NA POPULATION: NA INTERVENTIONS: NA MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): NA RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: The virtual text, whose roots extend into the ground of both artistic and aesthetic texts, gives rise to analysis that flourishes in the light of rigorous scrutiny. The virtual text serves to describe the linkage between the research interview and the research report. We construct the virtual text from its artistic origins in the interview transcript and its aesthetic origins in the mind of the researcher. Nurses whose research of practice includes the elicitation, analysis, or transmission of stories may find reader-response theory useful in better understanding their interpretive strategies. They may also find that the awareness of their virtual texts, and the instantiation of virtual texts within memo files, enhances the trustworthiness of their research. [CINAHL abstract]