Nursing research in HIV/AIDS home care, Part 1: Importance and methods.

One of the primary goals of nursing research is to develop a systematic body of knowledge to guide nursing practice. In the community setting, an extremely useful method of research is the exploratory field study, which can be used to discover important variables that may exist in real-life situations. This study reflects an analysis of the problems that were identified in persons living with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome in New York City who were referred for home care services. Part I presents an overview of nursing research methods, focusing on an actual field study in human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome home care; Part II describes the results and implications for nursing.