4. Stimulation of nurse scholars to systematically investigate care and caring and to share their findings with others. These four goals, developed by the members of the Caring Research Conference Group, provided nurse scholars with a direction for caring research that yielded a substantial piece of research-based literature. The first ten years of the Conference group (1978-1988) witnessed a great deal of diverse and stimulating research. Major philosophical dimensions of caring were explicated in the works of Bevis (1981), Gaut (1984), Ray (1981), Roach (1984), and Watson (1979) Explication of major components, processes, and patterns of care or caring from a transcultural perspective was first developed in the early work of Aamodt (1978) and Leininger (1978, 1981), to be followed by the works of Baziak-Dugan (1984), Boyle (1984), Guthrie (1981), Wang (1984), and Wenger and Wenger (1988). Another group of nurse researchers chose to study the concept of care and caring concomitantly with nursing care practices. Brown (1982), Gardner and Wheeler (1981), Knowlden (1985), Larson (1981, 1984), Riemen (1984, 1986), Sherwood (1991), and Wolf (1986) investigated nurse behaviors perceived by patients and nurses as indicators of caring and noncaring in an attempt to further develop the essential structure of a caring interaction. Watson, Bruckhardt, Brown, Block, and Hester (1979) proposed an alternative health care model for nursing practice and research. After seven years of implementation experience using a clinical practice model with various hospitals, Wesorick (1990) presented a model that supported caring as a practice norm in hospital settings. Administrative caring within an institutional or organizational culture was the research focus for Nyberg (1989), Ray (1984, 1989), Valentine (1989, 1991), and Wesorick (1990, 1991). Caring within educational settings and in the teacher-learner relationship also received attention by Bevis (1978), Bush (1988), Condon (1986), and MacDonald (1984). Research methodologies became a focus of study as investigators struggled with how best to study nurse caring phenomena: Boyle (1981), Gaut (1981, 1985), Larson (1981), Leininger (1976), Ray (1985), Riemen (1986), Swanson-Kauffman (1986), Valentine (1988), Watson (1985), and Wenger (1985).