This part of the site covers many aspects of research: information from published research, advice on aspect of research such as getting published, information about active UK research, and anything else where rehabilitation and research overlap.
The longest standing specialist rehabilitation journal is, as far as I am aware, the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. The first journal associated with the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (founded 1923) was the journal of Radiology started in 1920 It has changed names several times: Archives of Physical Therapy, X-ray, Radium (1926); Archives of Physical Therapy (1938); Archives of Physical Medicine (1945); Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (1953).
Most of the early research was descriptive and, when I started in rehabilitation in 1980 there were few evaluative, randomised controlled trials. I was informed, authoritatively, that it was not possible to research in rehabilitation, and that randomised trials could not be undertaken. There is now a huge body of high-quality evaluative research into rehabilitation with nearly 10% of systematic reviews in the Cochrane Library concerned with rehabilitation.
The content of this part will include:
Getting your research published
I have edited Clinical Rehabilitation for about 25 years, and I never cease to be amazed by how hard many authors strive to ensure their paper is not published. This part will set out how you can increase the chances of being publish, concentrating on avoiding all the things people do that will lead to rejection. Ultimately acceptance by a particular journal is luck; but rejection is often due to carelessness and lack of consideration of the editor and reviewers. Read more here.
Measurement in rehabilitation
This page discusses measurement in rehabilitation research: the main purposes, the main types of measure; the characteristics of a suitable measure for a project; and selecting a measure. It also discusses the use of measures clinically, concluding that research measures are not necessarily appropriate for clinical use. A data-base of measures can be found in the compendium here. The measurement page is here.
