Ruth Cronje's Research Projects
Dr. Cronje’s scholarly interests center on the role of rhetoric in rational discourse, particularly that of science and medicine. Her work has concentrated on the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, the stated goal of which is to “rationalize” medical decision making. She is particularly interested in the impact of EBM on patient communication. Related interests include communication of science to the public, risk communication, and the interplay of ethics with the epistemology of science.”
Cronje, R, Williamson OD. Is Pain Ever Normal? Journal of Clinical Pain, 2006. Accepted for publication.
This article analyzes the language by which clinicians and pain experimenters taxonomize various pain experiences of patients. Most of these pain categories are defined in terms of a reference standard of “normal” pain; however, we argue that the difficulties intrinsic to measuring a subjective, interpretive experience like pain renders the determination of what would constitute “normal” pain problematic.
Cronje RJ, Freeman, JR, Williamson OD, Gutsch CJ. Evidence-based medicine: Recognizing and managing clinical uncertainty. Laboratory Medicine. 2004;36(12):723-729.
Evidence-based medicine suffuses all aspects of health care, including the clinical laboratory. While it presents medical and laboratory clinicians with a number of significant challenges, it provides a method to support more effective management of the uncertainty that pervades medicine. The United States Institute of Medicine calls for the use of best-evidence, patient-centered care to be a central element of medical practice. This article discusses how laboratory clinicians can use evidence-based techniques to quantify, and thus manage, the uncertainty intrinsic to diagnostic decision-making.
Evidence-Based Medicine: Toward a New Definition of 'Rational' Medicine
In Collaboration with Amanda Fullan
The article was published in health (sic): An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. 2003; 7(3):353-369.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) promises to make the practice of medicine more fully 'rational,' thereby increasing medicine's reliability and improving patient health outcomes. However, intractable ethical and epistemic problems with applying a model of rationality that privileges quantifiable 'evidence' in medical practice--evidence often at odds with nonquantifiable patient experiences, values, and preferences--have prompted some within the medical community to condemn EBM. This paper analyses textual evidence from the medical literature as the medical community's effort to rhetorically renegotiate a new model of rationality, one which both preserves rationality's promise to protect medical decision making from the dogmatic, subjective, and arbitrary and permits nonquantifiable patient experiences, values, and preferences to play a legitimate role in rational diagnostic and therapeutic decision making.
Cronje RJ. The potential for rationality: Rhetoric as communicative action. Goodnight GT, ed. Arguing Communication and Culture. Washington, DC: National Communication Association. 2002; 267-273.
This paper addresses the question of whether and how rhetoric functions in rational discourse. Specifically, it considers Jürgen Habermas’s definition of rhetoric and his ideas about its functional importance in his model of communicative rationality. The paper includes the analysis of a case of controversy over the publishability of a scientific article. This article which was perceived by its peer reviewers to violate the conditions Habermas posits as necessary for rational discourse to occur, thus providing empirical support for his theory.
Intercultural Promotion of Evidence-Based Medicine
In Collaboration with Aaron Broege
Go directly to the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) website to view this document.
The images on my homepage were pictures taken in Ukraine and Croatia as part of this study.
WIND-EAU Project
In Collaboration with Gloria Hochstein, Julie Peterson, and Karen Welch
Project WIND-EAU is a systematic effort to learn how all teaching faculty and teaching academic staff in all disciplines at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) assign, use, and evaluate writing in their courses. In addition, this project seeks to assess the impact of changing information technologies on student writing at UWEC.
Throughout the 2001-2002 academic year, the Project WIND-EAU team collected three types of data to allow methodological triangulation:
ï An online survey of all 562 UWEC faculty, of which 22% responded;
ï Interviews of 40 selected faculty, from 23 departments;
ï Analysis of writing assignments and graded student work from selected faculty.
We identified consistent areas of faculty concern with students' ability to write, and identified areas in which faculty perceptions and approaches differed greatly regarding students and writing. Some topics of our research include the pedagogical use of writing assignments, concern with student writing performance, faculty attitudes towards technology, faculty attitudes regarding plagiarism, faculty attitudes about the critical thinking skills of students, and faculty observations about aspect (s) of writing (grammar and mechanics, content, style, synthesis, etc.) that are most important and/or most problematic.
Analysis of our survey responses, interviews, and students' writing samples strongly suggest that one required writing course during our students' first year of college should be only the beginning--not the end--of their college writing instruction. Some advanced writing courses in the English Department are offered as general electives. While such writing courses can enhance students' general understanding of writing strategies, forms, and purposes, our research suggests that students need further writing experience that becomes increasingly targeted to the discourses, methods of inquiry, and rhetorical strategies of their own disciplines.
Several departments at UWEC require (or at least offer) a writing intensive course that further develops their majors' use of writing to better understand and interact with the discipline. History, Business Communication, and Philosophy/Religious Studies are examples of departments that have courses with the word "writing" in the title; some departments, such as Biology, Mathematics, Social Work, and a few others have writing-intensive courses that include significant and/or frequent writing assignments and instruction. We view these courses as models from which interdisciplinary conversations could begin. A number of faculty from a variety of disciplines already use effective strategies for teaching and assigning writing, and we believe that we could all learn much from each other.
All of the participants in our study are clearly concerned about the writing performance of UWEC students. They recognize a variety of reasons for including writing in their courses, and they have realistic expectations about the quality of writing their students should be turning in. They want students to become good critical thinkers, to engage in thorough and meaningful research, to learn how to organize and develop their ideas effectively, and to apply the conventions of English grammar and usage accurately and creatively. However, many of them are concerned about the quality of the writing students are submitting; they both appreciate and express concern about the effects of technology on students' learning; and they want to find more effective ways to help students understand the seriousness of plagiarism.
