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The internet has become an everyday communication tool for countless people throughout the world. It has a variety of potential uses in education, practice and research, but only in the last decade have nurse researchers begun to take advantage of the multiple uses the internet has to offer. The author reviews the uses of the internet to conduct research and addresses challenges and issues that currently influence web-based research
key words
* internet
* nursing research
* web-based
* data collection
Introduction
The establishment of the internet, specifically the world wide web (WWW), as an everyday means of communication has significantly enhanced interaction among individuals and groups in all areas of life (Strickland et al 2003). Prior to the mid-1990s, researchers who used the internet primarily did so to access information for more traditional research purposes such as emailing, electronic mailing lists. Usenet newsgroups, specialty search engines, metasearch engines, and website directories on the WWW (Duffy 2002). In recent years, the explosion in use of the internet has offered more opportunities to the researcher (Box 1) by providing a new environment for conducting web-based research.
Because of its graphical user interface and capability to integrate images and sounds, the internet can produce a more intuitive and rich context for research opportunities (Duffy 2002). With seemingly endless advances in web-based technology and increasing numbers of internet users, researchers have online access to diverse populations, including those that are otherwise hard to reach.
The internet has offered many new opportunities to researchers in a variety of disciplines. Web-based research involves a number of internet capabilities researchers can exploit to plan and/or implement a research study, and offers advantages of cost, speed and access over more traditional paper-and-pencil procedures. According to Duffy (200Oa, 2002), a typical web-based study involves the development of a specially designed web page containing a survey or questionnaire for completion by a specifically selected population. In addition to data collection, researchers and scientists have found this type of research useful for:
* interviewing (Barry 2001, Bliven et al 2001, Bowker et al 2004, Cotton 2003, Granello et al 2002)
* virtual focus groups (Adler and Zarchin 2002, Moloney et al 2003)
* validating instruments (Aladwani and Palvia 2002, Koch et al 2001, Meyerson...