An Analysis of Master's and Doctoral Thesis in Nursing - Centered on a Nursing, an Education, and a Public Health Graduate College -

간호학 석.박사 학위논문의 분석

This study was conducted for the purpose of identifying the trends of nursing research and to suggest the direction of future research in the graduate levels of the study. The data was collected from 469 abstracts of master's and doctoral rapers from three graduate schools, one in Nursing, another in Education, and the other in Public Health Graduate College. The results of the study are as follows: The number of research was increased from 102 to 286 between the 1970 s and 1980's. The most frequently employed research design was descriptive studies in the master's level, but there was some balance between descriptive and experimental studies along with some qualitative approaches in the doctoral thesis. Patients were the most often studied sample group reaching 42% of the cases, though it Was noted that there was steady shift: toward the non-ratient population. With this shifting of the study sample, the places of the study also have showed some changes moving toward community. The most widely studied area was in clinical practice. Chronic illness, preventive, and health promoting areas of studies also increased in numbers. However, most of them were at the descriptive level of phenomena and only a few were concerned with cost/effective measures of nursing intervention. The number of variables studied repeatedly more than five times was 43. They were not only physical but also psychosocial aspects which imply the efforts to incorporate the whole person in nursing discipline. However, most researches with repeated studies showed little relation to previous studies, and thus little accumulation in knowledge. There was also little evidence of linkage to nursing theory in most studies of master's level. For the doctoral rapers, 17 out of 51 rapers showed specific theories related to the researches. Based on the above findings, the following suggestions were made. Various research design should be employed including case studies, historical studies, as well as qualitative approaches. There should be more effort to establish linkage between theory and research. The areas needing more attention are Korean Nursing History, Ethics in our Culture, Cost/Effective Measures of Nursing Intervention, Concept and Thory Development, and the Strategies for the Implication of the Research Results in clinical practice.