2004, Number 5
La investigación sobre aspectos epidemiológicos y psicosociales de la salud mental: Un análisis bibliométrico
García-Sílberman S, Arana D, Martínez R, Infante R, Jiménez A
Full text
Language: Spanish
References: 33
Page: 8-22
PDF size: 701.80 Kb.
ABSTRACT
The main objective of this paper is to describe the most important characteristics of the scientific work developed at the Dirección de Investigaciones Epidemiológicas y Psicosociales (DIEP) from the Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente (INPRF), using printed material as an indicator to evaluate productivity.We consider important to make a descriptive and critical analysis of the development of knowledge generated and disseminated with the purpose of having it as a base for planning future activities after twenty-five years of scientific activity in epidemiological and psychosocial research.
Bibliometric analysis is a tool developed to perform quantitative studies of printed matter; it seeks to show numbers related to research activities through description of printed publications in a particular field.
On this paper, we are trying to give a panoramic view of the different topics, the specific population groups studied, the methods used, as well as the different pathways and tendencies in these twenty-five years. This allows for the identification of particular fields that have been underestimated and which can be considered as starting point for the development of future research.
The analysis of each document has been defined in three basic aspects: content, authors, and dissemination media used. This strategy made it possible for us to know the amount of the production and its quantitative and qualitative characteristics in terms of type of publication, the country where it was published, the assignment and nationality of the authors, the number of authors by article, the type of research and its subject matter, the population studied, and the amount of publications per year.
All the material used in this study belongs to a bibliographic database (BIBLISMAD), which is permanently updated and which gathers more than 5000 references of research reports published in Mexico or by Mexican researchers, among them all those who are or were part of the DIEP.
All the references corresponding to documents that had been published were considered, including articles in journals, book chapters, complete books, manuals and reasearch instruments. References corresponding to unpublished works, summaries in memories and communications presented in congresses were excluded. The selection of the material was carried out considering the fact that at least one of the authors was assigned to the DIEP when the paper was published or during the period when the research was performed.
The bibliographic material was analyzed considering different aspects of each one in the manner of variables. This way we registered the type of publication (full book, manual, article in journal, book chapter, instrument, and report), the type of article (empiric research, review, and essay), the country of the journal or book, the number of authors by paper, articles where the main author was part of the DIEP, assignment of the authors (researcher form the DIEP, external national researcher, and external foreign researcher), the type of empirical research performed (quantitative or qualitative), the field of research (mental health or addictions), and the population under study (children, adolescents, adults, and elderly people).
Apart from mere quantification and the kind of papers published, we considered a qualitative analysis as a very important aspect. In this case, we worked with the contents of each manuscript to identify general areas, particular topics, methods applied, populations researched, and the media chosen to publish. With this, we attempted to obtain indicators of the relative weight of each item.
For this study, we analyzed an overall of 1457 works published between 1978 and 2003. Results are presented according to the type of publication, the authorship, and the main topic.
The analysis allowed building a map of the research performed by the DIEP in the last twenty-five years. We found that most of the material corresponded to articles in scientific journals, most of them Mexican, almost a third American, and a fifth European. Regarding language, more than a half of the articles are in Spanish, nearly 40% are in English and small percentages are in French and Portuguese. As for the specialty of the publications, most of them were published in psychology, psychiatry, mental health, and addiction journals. Nevertheless, due to the characteristics of psychosocial research, 24% of the papers were published in different medic magazines (general practice, public health, epidemiology, pediatrics, geriatrics, AIDS treatment, biomedical sciences, gynecology, cancerology, neurology, nutrition, perinatology, sexuality and reproductive health), 17% in social sciences and humanities journals (culture, education, adolescence, anthropology, social work, family), and 3% in science and technology magazines.
Tendencies in productivity were satisfactory, with variations related to the nature of research, which is devoted to data collection and analysis in some periods and in others to the publication of results. Broadly speaking, there was an increase in productivity. This increase was more obvious between 1984 and 1994, which may be explained by an institutional growth in terms of financial and human resources. This growth tended to stabilize in the last decade, in spite of which productivity has not stopped growing.
When we analyzed data related to authorship, there was a marked leadership on the side of the DIEP researchers: 90% of the articles published had a researcher from the DIEP as the main author. In the other hand, there were 286 co-authors from Mexico and 204 from other countries, which is a sign of the great interest to work with different groups from institutions all over the country and overseas. Although the production average level seems to be low, this is explained by the fact that many authors have collaborated temporally as post-graduate students, students writing their dissertation, and students in social service.
One indicator of the important role of the DIEP as a generator of original knowledge in mental health and addiction fields is the high percentage of papers reporting results of researches developed by this area of the institute. The frequency of quantitative methods is a reflex of the predominance of this perspective in science, and in health sciences particularly. However, the growing development that qualitative and mixed methods have had during this last decade is noteworthy. This implies an enrichment of the amount and out reach of the knowledge generated in our field of work.
The diversity of topics allows for a thought about the great advance experienced by mental health in recent years, especially in epidemiologic and psicosocial regards. However, it must be said that there are still many challenges to face.
REFERENCES
GORBEA-PORTAL S: Aportación latinoamericana a la producción científica en Ciencias Bibliotecológicas y de la Información. Trabajo presentado en el 66th IFLA Council and General Conference de la Internacional Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Jerusalén, Israel. (http:// www.ifla.org/IV/ifla66/papers/089-163s.htm), 2000.