Mapping the literature on the qualitative approach to childhood asthma from 1996 to 2018: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Resumo Objectives: to describe the scientific production of qualitative studies in childhood asthma. Methods: bibliometric analysis. Articles were from Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane, and PubMed (1996-2018), using the search terms asthma, children, qualitative research, qualitative study, qualitative analysis, ethnographic, phenomenology and narrative. Results: 258 articles were retrieved from 143 journals, representing 1.2% of scientific articles on childhood asthma. The growth rate was high. Authorship included 969 authors (85.3% occasional) from 279 institutions. 94.2% were co-authored and 3.5% were international collaborations. The greatest number of articles were from the United States (45.3%), United Kingdom (17.4%) and Canada (7.4%). The categories with the highest number of articles were Nursing & Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (18.2%), Respiratory System (10.1%) and Allergy (7.7%). 99.7% of the articles were in English. Conclusion: these results show a lack of consolidation of the literature based on qualitative studies on childhood asthma with a high percentage of occasional authors and limited international collaboration, indicating a need to strengthen this approach.