Research perceptions and utilization among massage therapists in Saskatchewan, Canada
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose & Objectives: To foster improved client care and the continued professionalization of Massage Therapy (MT), it is important that MT practitioners’ research utilization is more clearly understood. The purpose of the study was to explore Massage Therapists’ (MTs) perceptions of research and their self-reported research utilization. Specifically, to 1) describe MT’s perceptions of research and their appraised self-efficacy in research literacy and capacity; 2) better understand the nature of MT’s research utilization; 3) identify what practitioner characteristics are associated with research utilization.\n \nMethods: Using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, the study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, all (815) registered members of the Massage Therapist Association of Saskatchewan (MTAS) were invited to participate in a mail-out survey. In the second phase, semi-structured qualitative interviews using a critical incident framework explored the nature of practitioners’ use of research. Univariate and logistic regression analysis were conducted using SPSS.\n\nResults: In total, 333 questionnaires were returned for a 41% response rate. MTAS members reported overall positive perceptions of research as indicated by high endorsement of its value in adding credibility to MT and by majority agreement that MT practice should be based on research. Reported self-efficacy in various research literacy and capacity skills revealed low levels of knowledge and experience. Reported reference to online research databases, reference to peer-reviewed journals, the belief that MT practice should be based on research, and working more than 20 hours per week were all predictive of research utilization. Case study participants described specific events regarding challenges and successes in utilizing research in their practices and key factors underpinning research utilization were issues of access, issues related to the practitioner, issues of the research itself, and issues of impact on care.\n\nConclusion & Implications: While members of the MTAS perceive research positively, a gap exists between research and practice. Challenges to the diffusion of research appear to be occurring at the stages of research awareness and understanding. Curriculum in MT schools should include more critical appraisal training and more research-based resources. Provincial regulatory status may be the first step to quality training and service delivery.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it