Nadine Wathen Research

Faculty of Information & Media Studies :: Nadine Wathen's Home Page

	Nadine's research ::
Home Research Teaching Links Contact	My research cross-cuts several areas, but my general approach is to use a variety of research methods, as appropriate to the questions being asked, to help understand how people (women, health care providers, health policy-makers, etc.) seek and use information to make decisions. Theoretically, my work is informed by approaches derived from the perspectives of both individual differences as well as those that encompass how people make decisions situated in their social, and socio-technical, contexts. My current areas of research are described below, and are supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award (2007-2012). violence against women and children women’s health information seeking and decision-making health information use and info(r)mediation knowledge translation & exchange

	Violence against women and children With colleagues at McMaster University, University of Toronto, and UWO, I’m involved in a number of studies to understand, develop and evaluate interventions to identify and treat women exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV), as well as studies examining the causes and consequences of child abuse. Current and recent projects … PreVAiL: Preventing Violence Across the Lifespan Research Network and Centre - a 5-year CIHR Centre for Research & Development in Gender, Mental Health and Violence (see PreVAiL Summary or link to website) An Evaluation of Shelters as Service Navigation Hubs for Abused Women (funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation) Knowledge translation (see also below) Randomized controlled trial of universal screening for IPV in health care settings Development of an IPV intervention in the context of nurse home visits (funded by US Centres for Disease Control) Professional education for responding to violence against women Key publications … Jack, S.M., Ford-Gilboe, M., Wathen, C.N., Davidov, D.M., McNaughton, D.B., Coben, J., Olds, D.L., MacMillan, H.L. Development of a nurse home visitation intervention for intimate partner violence. Submitted to: BMC Health Services Research (accepted February 2012). Tanaka, M., Jamieson, E., Wathen, C. N., MacMillan, H. (2010). Methodological standards for randomised controlled trials of interventions for preventing recurrence of child physical abuse and neglect. Child Abuse Review, 19(1), 21-38. Wathen, C.N., Tanaka, M., Catallo, C., Lebner, A.C., Friedman, M.K., Hanson, M.D., Freeman, C., Jack, S.M., Jamieson, E., MacMillan, H.L. and the McMaster IPV Education Research Team. (2009). Are clinicians being prepared to care for abused women? A survey of health professional education in Ontario, Canada. BMC Medical Education, 9:34. MacMillan H.L., Wathen C.N., Jamieson E., Boyle M.H., Shannon H., Ford-Gilboe M., Worster A., Lent B., Coben J., Campbell J.C., McNutt L.A. for the McMaster Violence Against Women Research Program. (2009). Screening for intimate partner violence in health care settings: Results of a multi-site randomized trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 305(5), 493-501. MacMillan, H.L., Wathen, C.N., Barlow, J., Fergusson, D.M., Leventhal, J.M., Taussig, H.N. (2009). Child maltreatment 3: Interventions to prevent child maltreatment and associated impairment. The Lancet, 373(9659):250-66. Wathen, C.N., Jamieson, E., MacMillan, H.L. (2008). Who is identified by screening for intimate partner violence? Women’s Health Issues, 18(6), 423-432 . Wathen, C.N., Jamieson, E., Wilson, M., Daly, M., Worster, A., MacMillan, H.L. (2007). Risk indicators to identify intimate partner violence in the emergency department. Open Medicine, 1(2), e113-22. MacMillan, H.L., Wathen, C.N., Jamieson, E., Boyle, M., McNutt, L.A., Worster, A., Lent, B, Webb, M. (2006). Approaches to screening for intimate partner violence in health care settings: a randomized trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 296(5), 530-536. Wathen, C.N., MacMillan, H.L. (2003). Interventions for violence against women: Scientific review. Journal of the American Medical Association, 289(5): 589-600. ...more publications top of page

	Women’s health information seeking and decision-making Most of my research examines how women seek and use health information—in a variety of contexts—to make health-related decisions. Current & recent projects … Does information provided in health care settings help women exposed to violence? How do women in rural areas seek and use health information? What is the role of technology and the internet? Key publications (linked to abstract or full text if available) … Wathen, C.N., McKeown, S. (2010). Can the government really help? Online Information for women experiencing violence. Government Information Quarterly, 27, 170-176. Wathen, C.N., Harris, R.M. (2007). “I try to take care of it myself.” How rural women search for health information. Qualitative Health Research, 17(5), 639-651. Harris, R.M., Wathen, C.N. (2007). “If my mother was alive I’d probably have called her. Nowadays, I turn to the internet.” Women’s search for health information in rural Canada. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47(1), 67-79. Wathen, C.N. (2006). Health information seeking in context: How women make decisions regarding hormone replacement therapy . Journal of Health Communication, 11, 477-493. ...more publications top of page

	Health information use and info(r)mediation What human and technical actors serve as mediators between people and health information? To what degree do “credentials” matter? How can various technologies—both visible and invisible—perform health “info(r)mediation” and how are people configured in these processes? These and related questions have formed the basis of an ongoing collaboration with colleagues Roma Harris and Sally Wyatt. Current projects … Various examinations of health information seeking, and the role of technology (e.g., how do online communities support women’s decisions in such areas as birth choices and breast cancer care?) Key publications … O'Grady, L., Wathen, C.N., Charnaw-Burger, J., Betel, L., Shachak, A., Luke, R., Hockema, S., Jadad, A. (2012). The use of tags and tag clouds to discern credible content in online health message forums. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 81(1):36-44. Harris, R., Wathen, C.N., Wyatt, S. (Eds.) (Nov 2010). Configuring Health Consumers: Health Work and the Imperative of Personal Responsibility. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Wathen, C.N., Wyatt, S., Harris, R. (Eds.) (2008). Mediating Health Information: The Go-Betweens in a Changing Socio-Technical Landscape. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978-0-230-20120-0 O'Grady, L., Witteman, H., Wathen, C.N. (2008). Supporting experiential learning in collaborative Web-based patient education. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 8:58. Harris, R.M., Wathen, C.N., Fear, J.M. (2006). Searching for health information in rural Canada: Where do residents look for health information and what do they do when they find it? Information Research, 12(1). ...more publications top of page

	Knowledge translation & exchange What counts as ‘evidence’ for different user groups? How can research results be synthesized and communicated to ensure uptake and use by clinical, policy and lay audiences? Current & recent projects & events … Evaluating the impact of research evidence on decision-making in the area of violence against women. (Funded by CIHR (Phase 1) and the SSHRC Presidential Fund Initiative: Capturing the Outcomes and Impacts of Publicly Funded Research (Phase 2)) Knowledge translation events The Knowledge Flow & Exchange in Interdisciplinary Care Teams project critically examines how information/knowledge/evidence flows through, is exchanged within and enters and leaves interdisciplinary primary health care teams to answer a number of important questions in the fields of knowledge translation and exchange, evidence-informed health care and inter-professional education and practice. The project is part of the larger Western Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Healthy Living Across the Lifespan funded by UWO’s Interdisciplinary Development Initiative. The PreVAiL Research Network has a specific theme area dedicated to KTE in the area of gender, violence and mental health. Key publications … Wathen, C.N., Sibbald, S.L., Jack, S.M., MacMillan, H.L. (2011). Talk, trust and time: A longitudinal case study evaluating knowledge translation and exchange processes in research on violence against women. Implementation Science, 6:102. DOI:10.1186/1748-5908-6-102 (designated as Highly Accessed by the journal) Wathen, C.N., Watson, G., Jack, S.M., Caldwell, S., Lewis, N. (2008). From big to small: A process for developing policy-relevant research summaries. Healthcare Policy, 4(1), 47-56. See also the handbook on preparing research summaries developed for this project. MacMillan, H.L., Jamieson, E., Wathen, C.N., Boyle, M., Walsh, C., Omura, J., Walker, J., Lodenquai, G. (2007). Development of a policy-relevant child maltreatment strategy. The Milbank Quarterly, 85(2):337-74. McLennan, J.D., Wathen, C.N., MacMillan, H.L., Lavis, J.N. (2006). Research-practice gaps in child mental health. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 45(6), 658-65. ...more publications top of page