Topic Analysis of Nursing Research Using Co‑Word Analysis

Nursing is one of the most important areas of medical sciences whose developmentsincluding its scientific publications can influence health care. Therefore, the aim of this study was toinvestigate nursing articles published from 2013 to 2018, and to provide a comprehensive view ofcommon topical clusters in this research area.

In this practical research,bibliometrics method and co‑word analysis technique are used. The study population includedall the articles in nursing area indexed in Web of Science from 2013 to 2018. The bibliometricssoftware, including BibExcel, UCINET, and SPSS was used to analyze the data.

Resultsindicated that the most frequently used nursing words in nursing research articles were “Qualityof life,” “Aged,” “Education,” and “Nursing.” Moreover, the pairs such as “Anxiety-Depression”,“Education, Nursing-Students, Nursing” and “Depression‑‑Quality of life” were the most frequentco‑occurrences. The use of hierarchical clustering led to the formation of seven topical clusters inNursing: “Nursing care for the Aged,” “Self‑care,” “Physical, emotional, and social support, “Motherand child health,” “Preventing nursing care,” “Nursing profession Research,” and “Quality of nursingcare.”

The growth of nursing scientific productions is an indicative of the importanceof this subject area in healthcare services; however, there is no balanced growth in various subjects.