Emerging content in nursing: an analysis of dissertation abstracts and titles: 1976-1982

This study describes the distribution of content in nursing doctoral program dissertations over a six-year period (1976-1982). Dissertation abstracts were requested from the 25 nursing doctoral programs that admitted students in the fall of 1982. A total of 319 dissertations first were grouped as either studies of clinical nursing or studies of social issues in nursing or studies of social issues in nursing and then coded for all subcategories that described the content of the study. Of the dissertations included in this analysis 78.4% pertained to clinical nursing; 21.6% were studies of social issues in nursing. Further analysis of subcategories and most frequently occurring combinations of study variables showed significant differences in dissertation content when analyzed by program age, geographic region of the country, and type of degree program.