School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e34497. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034497. Epub 2012 Apr 5.
Patient adherence is an important issue for health service providers and health researchers. However, the knowledge structure of diverse research on treatment adherence is unclear. This study used co-word analysis and social network analysis techniques to analyze research literature on adherence, and to show their knowledge structure and evolution over time.
Published scientific papers about treatment adherence were retrieved from Web of Science (2000 to May 2011). A total of 2308 relevant articles were included: 788 articles published in 2000-2005 and 1520 articles published in 2006-2011. The keywords of each article were extracted by using the software Biblexcel, and the synonym and isogenous words were merged manually. The frequency of keywords and their co-occurrence frequency were counted. High frequency keywords were selected to yield the co-words matrix. Finally the decomposition maps were used to comb the complex knowledge structures.
Research themes were more general in the first period (2000 to 2005), and more extensive with many more new terms in the second period (2006 to 2011). Research on adherence has covered more and more diseases, populations and methods, but other diseases/conditions are not as hot as HIV/AIDS and have not become specialty themes/sub-directions. Most studies originated from the United States.
The dynamic of this field is mainly divergent, with increasing number of new sub-directions of research. Future research is required to investigate specific directions and converge as well to construct a general paradigm in this field.
患者的依从性是医疗服务提供者和健康研究人员关注的一个重要问题。然而，不同的治疗依从性研究的知识结构尚不清楚。本研究运用共词分析和社会网络分析技术，对治疗依从性的研究文献进行分析，以展示其知识结构及其随时间的演变。
从 Web of Science（2000 年至 2011 年 5 月）检索到有关治疗依从性的科学文献。共纳入 2308 篇相关文章：2000-2005 年发表的 788 篇和 2006-2011 年发表的 1520 篇。使用软件 Biblexcel 提取每篇文章的关键词，并手工合并同义词和同源词。计算关键词的出现频率及其共现频率。选择高频关键词生成共词矩阵。最后采用分解图梳理复杂的知识结构。
研究主题在第一个时期（2000 年至 2005 年）更加笼统，在第二个时期（2006 年至 2011 年）则更加广泛，有更多的新术语。对依从性的研究涵盖了越来越多的疾病、人群和方法，但其他疾病/情况不如 HIV/AIDS 那么热门，也没有成为专门的主题/方向。大多数研究来自美国。
该领域的动态主要是发散的，研究的新方向不断增加。未来的研究需要调查具体的方向并收敛，以构建该领域的一般范式。
