Lactnetters, Thanks VERY MUCH to all of you who are helping spread the word of my questionnaire on to your intrapartum (LD) nurse colleagues. PLEASE continue to let LD nurses know about the research project. I am happy to mail paper versions to those with no internet access (preferably those who promise to return them, since I'll include a stamped, self addressed envelope!). To answer Winnie's questions, yes, surveys of this type (not randomized, but a convenience sample) have a greater likelihood of bias. However, the purpose of the dissertation is to develop the questionnaire, NOT draw conclusions. I asked a lot of organizational and other characteristics because I wanted to explore the influence of the other factors on nurses' actions. I will describe those because I am very interested in that, but the real focus is on developing the questionnaire (using proper statistical techniques on a large enough group for accuracy). The more responses I get, the better off I'll be as far as bias goes. Regarding epidural use, that is one of the characteristics I am looking at in my questionnaire. My faculty wanted to know if it was an independent variable (do epidurals influence the nurses' ability to perform supportive actions?) or a dependent variable (Do nurses' action influence the patient's need for an epidural?). I said BOTH, and had some explaining to do! So Winnie, whenever you get to evaluate the epidurals, you might see if there is a correlation between higher or lower epidural use and 1) certain MDs, 2) certain RNs, and even 3) the shift. Night shift (and late evenings and weekends and holidays) can often be more innovative and more supportive since they get less interference and have fewer scheduled procedures! Thanks again to all of you for passing on the information about my research study! Here's the link again, just in case! http://wnt.cc.utexas.edu/~sleutel/survey/ Martha Sleutel *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html