title: Mapping the knowledge structure of research on patient adherence: knowledge domain visualization based co-word analysis and social network analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Patient adherence is an important issue for health service providers and health researchers. However, the knowledge structure of diverse research on treatment adherence is unclear. This study used co-word analysis and social network analysis techniques to analyze research literature on adherence, and to show their knowledge structure and evolution over time.
  
  
  METHODS
  Published scientific papers about treatment adherence were retrieved from Web of Science (2000 to May 2011). A total of 2308 relevant articles were included: 788 articles published in 2000-2005 and 1520 articles published in 2006-2011. The keywords of each article were extracted by using the software Biblexcel, and the synonym and isogenous words were merged manually. The frequency of keywords and their co-occurrence frequency were counted. High frequency keywords were selected to yield the co-words matrix. Finally the decomposition maps were used to comb the complex knowledge structures.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Research themes were more general in the first period (2000 to 2005), and more extensive with many more new terms in the second period (2006 to 2011). Research on adherence has covered more and more diseases, populations and methods, but other diseases/conditions are not as hot as HIV/AIDS and have not become specialty themes/sub-directions. Most studies originated from the United States.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The dynamic of this field is mainly divergent, with increasing number of new sub-directions of research. Future research is required to investigate specific directions and converge as well to construct a general paradigm in this field.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Wanli
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.forename: Xiaochen
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Fujian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Zhihong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zuxun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Lu
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research; D006678:HIV; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000188:drug therapy; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D010349:Patient Compliance; D012107:Research Design; D012944:Social Support