Unlocking Korean Nursing: A Social Network Analysis of Research Trends
"Delve into the evolving landscape of Korean nursing through a data-driven exploration of research topics and their interconnectedness."
Nursing research in Korea has experienced remarkable growth in both quantity and quality since its inception in the 1970s. To maintain its unique characteristics as a body of knowledge, while expanding through exchanges with various academic disciplines, nursing must analyze the trends of accumulated knowledge and project future directions for knowledge creation.
Previous studies analyzing the Korean nursing knowledge system can be broadly divided into: (1) studies targeting the entire field of nursing, and (2) studies focusing on specific topics. While these studies have provided valuable insights into the trends and directions of the nursing knowledge system, their reliance on qualitative methods presents limitations in terms of time, labor, and dependence on expert knowledge.
To overcome these limitations, a quantitative approach called bibliometrics is needed. Bibliometrics is a branch of information science that studies the dissemination and communication of knowledge by quantifying information expressed through texts. Among the various methods used in bibliometrics, co-word analysis is particularly useful for revealing the knowledge structure of a field by analyzing the patterns of co-occurrence of terms used in texts.
Mapping Nursing Coverage and Research
Research on nursing in South Korea has examined 18 years of news coverage to identify the social, local, economic, and political agendas emphasized by the media. One analysis identified 72 news source networks and assessed their size, number of edges, density, and source centrality. A separate study examined 447 articles published between January 2015 and September 2024, using text mining, topic modeling, and network analysis to study media portrayals of nurse retention through the BigKinds platform. Research on core nursing skills also analyzed 82 Korean academic papers published from 2012 to 2024 to identify major themes, knowledge structures, and changes over time.
Fifty Years of Korean Nursing Science
The Korean Society of Nursing Science (KSNS) marked its 50th anniversary in 2020. A historical study examined the development of caring as a human science across the society's five decades, placing its academic footsteps, meanings, and future implications within Korea's sociocultural context. Historical research on nursing in modern Korean hospitals also examined the period from the late nineteenth century to 1910, with particular attention to four governmental hospitals. Together, these studies connect contemporary Korean nursing with both the institutional history of modern hospitals and the long-term development of nursing scholarship.
Mapping the Knowledge Web: Social Network Analysis in Nursing
This study employs social network analysis (SNA) to examine the co-occurrence patterns of research topics (terms) in the titles and abstracts of Korean nursing research papers. SNA is a method based on sociological and network theories that analyzes the relationships between entities (e.g., people, organizations, knowledge) represented as nodes and edges. This approach allows for a quantitative exploration of the structure and dynamics of the nursing knowledge domain.
- NDSL (http://www.ndsl.kr)
- RISS4U
- KMbase (http://kmbase.medric.or.kr)
- DBpia (http://www.dbpia.co.kr)
Topic Modeling Across Nursing Research
Recent reviews use text-based methods to map research themes across multiple nursing topics. A topic-modeling study analyzed 1,849 international studies and 212 Korean studies on accidental falls. Research on premature infants searched Korean and international journal databases for studies published from 1998 to 2020, while a neonatal family-centered-care study analyzed abstracts from 110 peer-reviewed articles published between 1995 and 2023. A systematic review of Korean studies also identified self-efficacy as a prominent topic in analyses of Korean nursing research.
Boundaries, Policy, and Educational Friction
Research on nursing legislation in South Korea argues that physician-dominated healthcare systems can produce interprofessional boundary conflicts, limiting nursing autonomy and complicating efforts to expand nursing's scope of practice. A 20-year discourse-network study examines how policy actors interacted around nursing legislation and how the issues changed over time. In nursing education, text network analysis has been used to examine clinical nurse educators' mentoring feedback by quantifying and visually mapping core themes and relationships. These studies point to institutional and relational constraints that can shape both policy progress and professional learning.
Work Environments and Professional Networks
A study using the 5th Korean Working Conditions Survey compared the work environments of registered nurses, nurse aides, and caregivers, emphasizing that better work environments may reduce burdens and improve performance. Another comparative secondary-data study constructed 304 matched pairs of hospital nurses from Korea and the United States, matched by age and gender, to examine differences in work characteristics and health status. Social-network research in acute nursing care also surveyed 83 nurses from four units in two hospitals in July 2022. Together, these studies compare occupational conditions across worker groups, national settings, and workplace relationships.
Implications for Future Research and Practice
This study provides a systematic overview of the knowledge structure of Korean nursing science, identifying key research topics, clusters, and emerging trends. The findings can be used to inform future research directions, identify areas for collaboration, and promote the development of evidence-based practice guidelines. By understanding the interconnectedness of research topics, nurses can gain a deeper appreciation of the complexity of the nursing knowledge domain and its relevance to practice.
Network Methods for Nursing Insight
Social network analysis has been applied to Korean nursing research by extracting noun phrases from text corpora, generating co-occurrence networks with cosine similarity, and analyzing and visualizing those networks with Pajek. Text network analysis is also described as a method that can quantify and visually map textual data to identify core themes and relationships in clinical nurse educators' mentoring interactions. Applied to nursing relationships, network research identified friendship, collaboration, advice, and referent networks as positive influences among nurses, alongside avoidance and bullying networks as negative influences. Strategic planning research has additionally used SWOT analysis to propose a framework for advancing nursing in Korea and strengthening nurses' social responsibility.
From Professional Grievances to Public Policy
Research on Korea's Nursing Act reports that poor working conditions, ambiguity in nursing roles, workforce instability, and concerns about healthcare sustainability gradually developed from profession-specific grievances into broader public policy concerns. A separate pre-proof study examines a 20-year discourse network surrounding nursing legislation in South Korea. Its focus on structural change in policy networks and legislative breakthrough places nursing regulation within a long-term pattern of discourse and policy-actor interaction. These sources frame nursing challenges as systemic issues extending beyond individual workplaces.
Social Learning in Nursing Education
A study of nursing students in South Korea examined an education program for core fundamental nursing skills delivered with Social Network Service (SNS). Its stated outcomes included knowledge of core fundamental nursing skills, clinical competency, self-efficacy, and learning motivation. The related quasi-experimental study used a non-equivalent control group and specifically investigated learning satisfaction, self-efficacy, and core fundamental nursing skills. These studies connect social-network technology with practical learning experiences for nursing students.