Awarded first place in the 2023 AJN Book of the Year Awards in Nursing Research.


Three-time recipient of the AJN Book of the Year Award!


The completely revised fifth edition of this authoritative text encompasses the most current middle range theories for graduate nursing students and researchers. User-friendly and consistently organized, it helps readers to understand the connection of research to larger conceptual models in nursing. The fifth edition presents three new theories, a revised chapter on concept-building, two published examples demonstrating the concept-building process, and a new section on the application of middle range theory that addresses its use for practice, and education. Additional new features include the fresh perspectives of a third editor, a two-color design to enhance readability, and discussion questions concluding each chapter.


The text describes sixteen middle range theories and elaborates on disciplinary perspectives, providing an organizing framework and evaluating the theory. Each theory is consistently organized by purpose, historical development, primary concepts, the relationships among concepts, and its use in nursing practice and research. Understanding of concepts is enhanced by the book's use of the ladder of abstraction for each theory to explain its relationship to philosophical, conceptual, and empirical theory dimensions.


New to the Fifth Edition:





Includes three new theories—Inner Strength, Unitary Caring, and Nature Immersion—for a total of 16 theories

A completely new section on application of theory to practice

New chapter on application of middle range theory to education

Extensively revised chapter on building concepts for research

Two-color design to enhance readability

Discussion questions at the end of each chapter to promote class dialogue

Nine practice examples relating to application of middle range theory

The expertise of a new editor



Key Features:





Delivers theories in consistent format to facilitate comparisons

Presents published exemplars demonstrating concept building

User-friendly and consistently organized

Summarizes middle range theories developed between 1988 and 2020