[The questions and methods of nursing research: a comparison between Italian and American journals]

The research articles published during 1988-1989 in Rivista dell'Infermiere (R d I) and during 1989 in Nursing Research (NR) have been analyzed to allow factual comparison on the tendencies of nursing research in Italy and in one other "model" country. There is no doubt that the picture which emerges from NR is quantitatively superior with respect to both the subjects and the methods employed: a more worrying characteristic however is the rather unsatisfactory qualitative level of the questions raised and investigated, and the absolute scarcity of multicentric studies.