A concept analysis of abductive reasoning

Abstract

As a new approach, abductive reasoning could enhance reasoning abilities of novice clinicians. It can not only incorporate various ways of knowing but also its holistic approach to learning appears to be promising in problem-based learning. As nursing literature on abductive reasoning is predominantly philosophical, practical consequences of abductive reasoning warrant further research.

Indian nurses in Italy: a qualitative study of their professional and social integration

“…The transcribed meaning units reflected the Indian nurses' perceptions about their professional and social integration in the Italian setting and constituted the manifest content (Saldaña 2009). The development of inferred interpretations that went beyond the content of original segments of data emerged through abstraction and were contextualised to the data (Mirza et al 2014).…”

“…The development of inferred interpretations that went beyond the content of original segments of data emerged through abstraction and were contextualised to the data (Mirza et al . ).…”

Cognitive Complexity: Differentiation and Integration in Counseling Practice and Training

“…Clinical practitioners tend to apply abductive reasoning to formulate the best possible predictions from limited observational evidence (Walton, ). As a creative precursor to deductive and inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning represents a form of logical inference that “involves integration and justification of ideas … to explain meaningful underlying patterns of selected phenomena” (Mirza, Akhtar‐Danesh, Noesgaard, Martin, & Staples, , p. 1982). On the basis of theory, observation, and experience, counselors form clinical judgments and infer explanations for clients' concerns using abductive reasoning skills.…”

Not so elementary – the reasoning behind a medical diagnosis

“…Analogous to the multiple competing hypotheses associated with abduction, it is noted that there may be multiple pairs of values for a and b such as (a,b) = {(0,1), (3,-1),(-9 ,7)}. Deductive and inductive reasoning processes by themselves are inadequate to describe what takes place during the initial stage of the diagnostic process where the clinician must come up with possible diagnoses as they cannot contribute to the development of explanatory theories (Mirza et al, 2014;Eriksson and Lindström, 1997;Haig, 2008).…”