Caring research and concepts: a selected review of the literature.

A selected review of the literature on caring in nursing is presented. The review relies on the work of the major theorists in this area. The major conceptualizations of caring are compared and contrasted, along with some of the research approaches which have been applied to investigate the phenomenon of caring in nursing. The outcome of quantitative and qualitative research on caring is described and the justification for an extension of the quantitative work, through the development of an appropriate inventory and the application of multivariate statistical analysis, is discussed.