The purpose of this study was to analyze the contents and trend of smoking and smoking cessation related nursing research in Korea and to suggest the directions for future research.

Eight nursing professional Journals published by the Korean Academic Nursing Society and by 7 - adult, community, psychiatric, fundamental, obstetrics, pediatrics, administrative- nursing societies from beginning edition to October 2005 were selected. They were examined for the proportion of published research, participants, research designs, key words, measurement tools, and the intervention outcomes in the case of the experimental research.

Of the research analyzed, 87 studies were smoking and smoking cessation related research. The Journals, which had published the most number of smoking and smoking cessation research were J of Korean Academic Society, J of Korean Adult Nursing Society, J of Korean Community Nursing Society. The most popular research design was an descriptive design. The major concepts studied were related psychosocial variables. Among 87 studies, only 11 were experimental research.

Research on smoking and smoking cessation in the nursing discipline are increasing. However more research to test the effectiveness of nursing intervention programs are needed.

Although feminism has been actively discussed and applied to nursing in Western societies since the 1980s, it is little known among Korean scholars as well as Korean nurses. This article explores the use of feminist perspectives in nursing science in other developed countries and suggests how feminism could be applied to nursing science in Korea.

The literature related to nursing and feminism were reviewed in terms of nursing practice, education, and research.

This article describes what feminism is and how feminism and nursing have evolved historically over time in other countries, especially in Western societies. In addition, it discusses how it can be applied to nursing practice, education, and research in Korea.

Accepting feminist perspective in Korean nursing could benefit in empowering nurses by valuing nursing, by raising self-esteem of nurses, and by raising the consciousness of socio-political realities. Eventually it could benefit in changing and developing nursing science in Korea.

This study was to describe nurses' research activities, perceptions and performances of evidence-based practice and barriers to the use of research evidence in nursing practice in Korea.

A cross-sectional survey design was used. A questionnaire, except for Barriers Scale, was developed for the study. Data was collected from a convenient sample of 437 registered nurses working at research and education oriented university hospitals.

Nurses' research-related activities were relatively low compared to previous studies. Also perceptions and performances of evidence based nursing practice were low. Preferred informational resources for clinical decision making were identified as ward manuals/clinical guidelines, manager/senior nurses, and literature/research. The major barriers to research utilization were a lack of implication for practice along with inadequate facilitation to implement research evidence and difficulty understanding research written in English. Priorities of barriers factor were Administrator, Communication, Adopter, and Research.

The findings provide directions for future training, education, and managerial policy to achieve successful evidence based nursing practice.

The process of designing a questionnaire is complicated. Many questionnaires on nursing phenomena have been developed and used by nursing researchers. The purpose of this paper was to discuss questionnaire design and factors that should be considered when using existing scales.

Methodological issues were discussed, such as factors in the design of questions, steps in developing questionnaires, wording and formatting methods for items, and administrations methods. How to use existing scales, how to facilitate cultural adaptation, and how to prevent socially desirable responding were discussed. Moreover, the triangulation method in questionnaire development was introduced.

Steps were recommended for designing questions such as appropriately operationalizing key concepts for the target population, clearly formatting response options, generating items and confirming final items through face or content validity, sufficiently piloting the questionnaire using item analysis, demonstrating reliability and validity, finalizing the scale, and training the administrator. Psychometric properties and cultural equivalence should be evaluated prior to administration when using an existing questionnaire and performing cultural adaptation.

In the context of well-defined nursing phenomena, logical and systematic methods will contribute to the development of simple and precise questionnaires.

This paper was written to introduce methods of using the research ethics committee (RES) from requesting the initial review to reporting the close-out for nursing researchers.

General ethical principles were described by reviewing the 'Bioethics and Safety Act' and other related guidelines, and constructing some questions and answers.

The results were composed of three parts; definition of RES, steps in using RES, and archiving. The 7 steps for using RES were; identifying whether the study needed to be reviewed, by the RES identifying whether the study could be exempted, requesting the initial review after preparing documents, requesting the re-review, requesting an amendment review, requesting a continuing review and reporting the close-out.

Nursing researchers need to receive RES approval before starting nursing research involving human subjects. Nursing researchers are urged to use the steps reported in this paper to receive RES approval easily and quickly.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the methodological quality of nursing studies using structural equation modeling in Korea.

Databases of KISS, DBPIA, and National Assembly Library up to March 2014 were searched using the MeSH terms 'nursing', 'structure', 'model'. A total of 152 studies were screened. After removal of duplicates and non-relevant titles, 61 papers were read in full.

Of the sixty-one articles retrieved, 14 studies were published between 1992 and 2000, 27, between 2001 and 2010, and 20, between 2011 and March 2014. The methodological quality of the review examined varied considerably.

The findings of this study suggest that more rigorous research is necessary to address theoretical identification, two indicator rule, distribution of sample, treatment of missing values, mediator effect, discriminant validity, convergent validity, post hoc model modification, equivalent models issues, and alternative models issues should be undergone. Further research with robust consistent methodological study designs from model identification to model respecification is needed to improve the validity of the research.

The purpose of this study was to identify trends for studies published in the Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing and journals published by member societies from inaugural issues to 2010.

A total of 6890 studies were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Quantitative studies accounted for 83.6% while qualitative studies accounted for 14.4%. Most frequently used research designs were quasi-experimental (91.1%) for experimental research and survey (85.2%) for non-experimental research. Most frequent study participants were healthy people (35.8%), most frequent nursing interventions, nursing skills (53.5%), and 39.8% used knowledge, attitude and behavior outcomes for dependent variables. Most frequently used keyword was elderly. Survey studies decreased from 1991 to 2010 by approximately 50%, while qualitative studies increased by about 20%. True experimental research (1.2%) showed no significant changes. Studies focusing on healthy populations increased from 2001-2005 (37.5%) to 2006-2010 (41.0%). From 1970 to 2010, studies using questionnaire accounted for over 50% whereas physiological measurement, approximately 5% only. Experimental studies using nursing skill interventions increased from 1970-1980 (30.4%) to 2006-2010 (64.0%). No significant changes were noted in studies using knowledge, attitude and behavior (39.9% ) as dependent variables.

The results suggest that further expansion of true experimental, qualitative studies and physiological measurements are needed.

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

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.

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.

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.

This study aimed was done to analyze recent trends in nursing research published in the Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing by focusing on the content of nursing interventions and their level of evidence.

A total of 209 studies published between 2007 and 2008 were reviewed using analysis criteria developed by the researchers.

The number of quantitative studies was greater than that of qualitative studies. There was a slight increase in the number of qualitative studies and studies including elderly populations, which reflects the recent population trend in Korea. More randomized controlled trials with a low risk of bias were needed to support more evidence-based nursing practice. Concerning the low rate of ethical consideration, stricter application of research ethics needs to be encouraged.

The findings of this study suggest the recent trends in nursing research and the direction of nursing research and review in the Journal.