Analysis of Research on Nurses’ Job Stress Using Network Analysis

Abstract

This study established a network related to nurses’ job stress by conducting a social network analysis of titles, keywords, and abstracts, and it identified emerging topics of research. NetMiner 4.0 visualized an interconnection between critical keywords and investigated their frequency of appearance to construe the trends in nurses’ job stress measures used in studies conducted over 55 years (1960-2015). Text Rank Analyzer examined a collection of 9,218 keywords from 2,662 studies. The analysis revealed four groups of newly emerging keywords in the research. The following five clusters were identified: concept, subject, method and tool, outcome and response, and solution and management. Thus, if new researchers refer to existing trends to establish the subject of their study, replication studies can be reduced, and the direction of the development of future research on nurses’ job stress can be predicted. Further application of new interventions, development of objective indicators, working environment, and broader participants are needed.