Polit Denise F, Beck Cheryl Tatano
Humanalysis Inc., 75 Clinton Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, United States.
Int J Nurs Stud. 2009 Aug;46(8):1102-10. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2009.02.002. Epub 2009 Mar 6.
This paper reports a study that examined the extent to which nurse researchers internationally disproportionately include females as participants in their research.
A bias toward predominantly male samples has been well-documented in medical research, but recently a gender bias favoring women in nursing research has been identified in studies published in four North American journals.
We extracted information about study samples and characteristics of the studies and authors from a consecutive sample of 834 studies published in eight leading English-language nursing research journals in 2005-2006. The primary analyses involved one-sample t-tests that tested the null hypothesis that males and females are equally represented as participants in nursing studies. Studies from different countries, in different specialty areas, and with varying author and methodologic characteristics were compared with regard to the key outcome variable, percent of participants who were female.
Overall, 71% of participants, on average, were female, including 68% in client-focused research and 83% in nurse-focused studies (all p<.001). Females were significantly overrepresented as participants in client-focused research in almost all specialty areas, particularly in mental health, community health, health promotion, and geriatrics. The bias favoring female participants in client-focused studies was especially strong in the United States and Canada, but was also present in European countries, most Asian countries, and in Australia. Female overrepresentation was persistent, regardless of methodological characteristics (e.g., qualitative versus quantitative), funding source, and most researcher characteristics (e.g., academic rank). Studies with male authors, however, had more sex-balanced samples. The mean percentage female in client-focused studies with a female lead author was 70.0, compared to 52.1 for male lead authors.
Nurse researchers not only in North America but around the globe need to pay attention to who will benefit from their research and to whether they are adequately inclusive in studying client groups about which there are knowledge gaps.
本文报告了一项研究，该研究考察了国际上护士研究人员在其研究中不成比例地将女性作为研究参与者的程度。
医学研究中偏向以男性为主的样本的情况已有充分记录，但最近在北美四家期刊发表的研究中发现了护理研究中偏向女性的性别偏见。
我们从2005 - 2006年在八家领先的英文护理研究期刊上发表的834项研究的连续样本中提取了有关研究样本以及研究和作者特征的信息。主要分析包括单样本t检验，该检验检验了男性和女性作为护理研究参与者的代表性相同这一零假设。就关键结果变量（女性参与者的百分比）而言，对来自不同国家、不同专业领域以及具有不同作者和方法学特征的研究进行了比较。
总体而言，平均71%的参与者为女性，其中以服务对象为重点的研究中这一比例为68%，以护士为重点的研究中为83%（所有p<.001）。在几乎所有专业领域中，女性作为以服务对象为重点的研究的参与者比例明显过高，尤其是在心理健康、社区卫生、健康促进和老年医学领域。在美国和加拿大，但在欧洲国家、大多数亚洲国家以及澳大利亚也存在，以服务对象为重点的研究中偏向女性参与者的偏见尤为强烈。无论方法学特征（如定性与定量）、资金来源以及大多数研究人员特征（如学术职称）如何，女性比例过高现象都持续存在。然而男性作者的研究样本性别更为均衡。以女性为主导作者进行的以服务对象为重点的研究中女性的平均百分比为70.0，而男性主导作者的研究这一比例为52.1。
不仅北美，全球的护士研究人员都需要关注谁将从他们的研究中受益，以及他们在研究存在知识空白的服务对象群体时是否具有足够的包容性。
