Interdisciplinary theory evaluation paper: a planning guide
The paper is called an evaluation, and the marks are in section four — the one that applies a set of criteria to two theories rather than describing what each theory says.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 10, 2026
What does the interdisciplinary theory evaluation require?
This assignment is a comparison whose outcome has to be earned. Six numbered sections, ten to twelve pages, eight references minimum, and one instruction that decides the grade: evaluate both theories using the evaluation criteria provided in the Learning Resources. Fawcett and Garity's evaluation strategy is not a background reading — it is the instrument. Its criteria run to things like significance, internal consistency, parsimony, testability, empirical adequacy and pragmatic adequacy, and section four means walking both theories through each of them in turn. A paper that summarises Orem, summarises Pender or self-efficacy theory, and then declares one more suitable has skipped the assessed step and written a comparison of impressions. Find the criteria before you find the theories. Everything else in the paper is arrangeable, but if you reach section four without a written list of criteria in front of you, the section will drift into a second summary and there is no way to recover the marks afterwards.
Because of that, section three and section four are doing different jobs and should read differently. Section three summarises what each theory claims: its major concepts, its propositions, its assumptions about the person and about health. Section four asks whether the theory is any good, on stated criteria, with evidence. Keep them apart. A useful discipline is to make section four's structure the criteria rather than the theories — one heading per criterion, both theories inside it — because that forces genuine comparison and makes it impossible to lose a criterion for one theory and not the other. It also produces a paper that reads as an evaluation rather than as two book reports with a verdict attached, which is the difference a marker notices first. Expect the two theories to win on different criteria; a clean sweep usually means the criteria were applied loosely.
The selection in section five must follow from section four rather than restate a preference, and this is where the practice problem does real work. The stated problem is whether patients with type 2 diabetes in self-care programmes achieve better glycemic control than those who do not, so ask which theory has propositions that actually generate that comparison. Orem's self-care deficit theory is built around self-care agency, self-care requisites and the deficit between demand and capability, which maps directly onto why a self-care programme might change anything. Pender's health promotion model and self-efficacy theory both centre on the antecedents of engaging in the behaviour in the first place — perceived benefits, barriers, and confidence — which explains participation rather than outcome. Both are defensible; the choice has to be argued from the propositions, and the brief says explicitly to use the propositions of the selected theory to address the practice problem.
That instruction is a stronger requirement than it looks. Using propositions means naming individual relational statements from the theory and showing what each predicts in your case. If you take Orem, a proposition connecting self-care agency to met therapeutic self-care demand tells you what your intervention has to change and therefore what to measure. If you take self-efficacy, the mechanism is confidence and mastery experience, so a programme built on demonstration and graded practice follows from the theory rather than from convention. Say what the theory rules out as well as what it recommends, because a proposition that could accommodate any intervention is not doing any work. The empirical literature helps you here: the evidence for diabetes self-management education on HbA1c is real but modest, and the programme features associated with effect — smaller groups, weekly contact, group format — are recognisably the mechanisms your theory names.
One consideration worth building in early is what the brief means by interdisciplinary. It says both theories may be middle range, or both interdisciplinary, or one of each. Self-efficacy theory comes from psychology and is used in nursing rather than of it, and saying so is not a criticism — it is a point about empirical adequacy, since a theory validated across many behavioural domains carries different evidence than a theory developed inside nursing practice. If you pick one from each category, the evaluation section can make that difference explicit and your comparison gains a dimension most papers do not have. The trade-off is real and worth stating: a borrowed theory arrives with breadth of validation and without nursing's particular concerns, while a nursing theory arrives with fit and a thinner testing record. Which of those matters more depends on the criterion you are applying, which is exactly the kind of judgement section four is asking for.
On mechanics, note that the page count includes references, which changes the arithmetic: ten to twelve pages with eight or more sources leaves roughly nine pages of text. That is enough for a short practice-problem section and a long evaluation section, which is the correct distribution. The paper is also the Major Assessment for the course, so the introduction should carry an explicit purpose statement as instructed — the brief even supplies the opening — and the conclusion should state which theory was selected and why, rather than summarising both theories again. The brief also allows you to reuse the practice problem and research question you developed earlier in the course, and you should: continuity gives the evaluation something concrete to bite on, and the alternative is inventing a problem you have not thought about yet.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Apply a formal theory evaluation framework rather than comparing theories by impression.
- 02Distinguish summarising a theory's claims from judging its adequacy.
- 03Select a theory by whether its propositions generate the practice question.
- 04Recognise how a theory's disciplinary origin affects the evidence behind it.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
Important information for writing discussion questions and participation Hi Class, Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts. Contact me if you have any questions. Important information on Writing a Discussion Question Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references) There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article. Include in-text citations in your response Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information Follow APA-7th edition Points will be deducted if the above is not followed Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week. 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The six sections and their requirements
- 01A 10–12 page paper including references, in APA format.
- 02A minimum of eight references.
- 03An introduction with an explicit purpose statement.
- 04A brief description of the selected clinical practice problem.
- 05A summary of two theories, middle range or interdisciplinary or one of each.
- 06An evaluation of both theories using the criteria from the Learning Resources.
- 07A determination of which theory is most appropriate, with its propositions applied to the practice problem.
- 08A conclusion.
Problem, summary, evaluation, selection
Introduction and the practice problem
State the purpose of the paper and describe the type 2 diabetes self-care problem concisely in PICO form.
Summary of the two theories
Set out each theory's major concepts, assumptions and propositions without judging them yet.
Evaluation against the stated criteria
Work through each Fawcett and Garity criterion, applying it to both theories with evidence.
Selection, application and conclusion
Choose the theory the evaluation supports and use its propositions to frame the practice problem and its measurement.
Where the theory and diabetes self-care evidence sit
Recommended databases
- CINAHL
- PubMed Central
- Your course Learning Resources, particularly the Fawcett and Garity chapter
- Nursing theory journals such as Nursing Science Quarterly and Nursing Forum
Search sequence
- 1.Read the Fawcett and Garity criteria first and write them down as headings; the whole evaluation section is structured by them.
- 2.Search each theory by name plus the word application or analysis, which returns work that judges the theory rather than work that merely uses it.
- 3.Search the practice problem separately for outcome evidence, since section five needs empirical support for the intervention and not only theoretical fit.
- 4.Look for at least one paper that criticises your chosen theory; a criterion-based evaluation with no weaknesses recorded reads as advocacy.
Sources for the theories and the practice problem
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Orem's nursing self-care deficit theory: A theoretical analysis focusing on its philosophical and sociological foundation
Nursing Forum · 2022
A philosophical and sociological analysis of Orem's theory rather than a description of it, which is the kind of source the evaluation section needs. Useful for the significance and internal consistency criteria; the abstract carries the argument if you cannot reach the full text.
- 02
Use of the Health Promotion Model by Nursing in Primary Care: an integrative review
Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem · 2025
Eight studies applying Pender's model across dietary change, healthy ageing, breastfeeding and HIV education, three of them randomised trials. This is your evidence for the pragmatic and empirical adequacy criteria if Pender is one of your two theories.
- 03
The effect of peer support in diabetes self-management education on glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Epidemiology and Health · 2021
Twelve randomised trials and 1,896 participants, with an effect on HbA1c and specific programme features associated with it — small groups, six months or less, weekly contact. The empirical anchor for the practice problem, and a useful check on whether your chosen theory's mechanism matches what actually works.
- 04
Applying the Pender's Health Promotion Model to Identify the Factors Related to Older Adults' Participation in Community-Based Health Promotion Activities
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2021
Finds age, perceived benefits and self-efficacy predicting participation, which is precisely the distinction between explaining who joins a programme and explaining what the programme changes. Cite it when you argue about which theory addresses your outcome.
- 05
Self-care deficit nursing theory
Wikipedia · 2025
A quick orientation to the theory's three constituent theories and its self-care requisite categories. Use it to get the vocabulary straight before reading the primary sources; do not cite it in the paper itself, where Orem's own work and peer-reviewed analyses belong.
Before you submit
Common mistakes
- Describing both theories twice instead of summarising in section three and evaluating in section four.
- Evaluating with adjectives — useful, comprehensive, well known — rather than with the named criteria.
- Organising the evaluation by theory, which makes it easy to apply a criterion to one and not the other.
- Choosing the theory first and back-filling the evaluation to support it.
- Naming propositions without saying what each one predicts about the practice problem.
- Ignoring that self-efficacy theory originates outside nursing when the brief distinguishes interdisciplinary from middle range theories.
- Forgetting that the page count includes references, so the body is shorter than it appears.
- Writing a conclusion that summarises both theories again rather than defending the selection.
Submission checklist
- The introduction contains a stated purpose sentence.
- The practice problem is described in PICO terms and stays constant through the paper.
- Two theories are summarised with their major concepts and propositions.
- Every evaluation criterion is applied to both theories.
- The selection is justified from the evaluation rather than asserted.
- At least two named propositions from the chosen theory are applied to the practice problem.
- Empirical evidence on the practice problem supports the application.
- At least eight references are cited and the paper runs 10–12 pages including them.
- APA formatting is applied throughout.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
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Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.