LAUSR

BACKGROUND Based on current and future research priorities to inform Ph.D. education, emerging and priority areas were developed through the Idea Festival Advisory Committee of the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science. PURPOSE The Purpose of this study was to examine the bibliographic, methodologic, study topic characteristics, and emerging and priority areas of two randomly selected samples of nursing doctoral dissertations from the Proquest Digital Dissertations and Theses database between January 2017 and September 2018. METHODS Using human- (N = 101) and computer-coding (N = 242), we analyzed text data using descriptive statistics and data visualization. FINDINGS Health behavior (32.7%) and quantitative sciences (17.8%) were the most common emerging and priority areas, and translation science and -omics/microbiome were absent. Health, practice, education, and leadership were four study topic themes. DISCUSSION This approach may serve as a metric for the state of Ph.D. nursing education. A replication study is recommended in three to five years.