[Analysis of trends and contents of nursing doctoral dissertations in Korea].
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to identify contents and trends of Korean nursing doctoral dissertations in terms of research methodology and theoretical characteristics.


METHODS
The design of the study was descriptive study and a total of 1,089 quantitative studies completed between 1982 and 2010 were reviewed using the analytical framework developed by the researchers.


RESULTS
The majority of studies utilized the experimental design (51.5%) and the others were survey design (38.8%) and methodological design (5.0%). Study subjects were shown as patients (45%), care givers (11.2%), ordinary persons (40.6%) and others (3.2%). There were growing trends in experimental design and patients as subjects. The prevailing data collection settings were hospitals (45.8%) and community (27.8%). The theoretical frameworks that studies were based on were the existing theories (37%) and a newly developed theoretical framework by a researcher (25.2%). a framework derived from other studies by the researcher (25.2%). Majority of studies (78.5%) employed a single theory as a theoretical framework. However, 31.8% of studies had no theoretical framework based on.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings of this study provided the opportunities to shed new light on the current status of Korean doctoral dissertation and to deliberate on the future direction of nursing studies in Korea.
Division of Nursing Science, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. kjlee@ewha.ac.kr
Kwang-Ja
KJ
Lee
Younhee
Y
Kang
Mee Ock
MO
Gu
Kyunghee
K
Kim
Oksoo
O
Kim
Yeon-Ok
YO
Suh
Eunyoung
E
Suh
Soo
S
Yang
Eun-Hyun
EH
Lee
Ja Hyung
JH
Lee
Myoung-Ae
MA
Choe
Yang Sook
YS
Hah
D004212:Academic Dissertations as Topic; D017028:Caregivers; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004511:Education, Nursing, Graduate; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D015399:Nursing Research / Q000639:trends*; D010361:Patients; D056910:Republic of Korea; D012107:Research Design / Q000639:trends; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012574:Schools