Using questionnaires to ask nurses about working in the community: problems of definition.

Given the emphasis on providing services in the community, it is likely that there will be an increase in research into various aspects of the community. It is important that the way in which 'community' is defined in research will provide valid and reliable data and facilitate comparisons with other work on the subject. This paper discusses how the problems of defining the community were approached in a longitudinal study of the careers of people qualifying from the pre-registration diploma course in nursing.