Research Methodology in The Ewha Medical Journal

There are several types of research methodology in the medical research papers. Each of these research methodologies establish their proper purposes in the medical resarches. This study was performed to examine the frequencies and types of research methodologiy for the purpose of providing the prospective aspects.

We reviewed 765 research papers in the Ewha Medical Journal, from 1978 to 1995. The research paper were included all kinds of papers in the Ewha Medical Journal such as review articles, oiginal articles, case reviews and so on. And we classified the research metho-dologies into case study, clinical trial, observational study, experimetal study and study for di-agnostic methods.

Case study was most commonly used study design(332 papers,43.4%), followed by experimental study(185 papers, 24.2%). In the 1970s, case report(44.1%) was the most com-monly used study design and enxt was experimental study(17.7%). In the 1980s, also the most commonly used study design was case report(48.7%) and experimental study(24.9%) was mark-edly increased than 1970s. Not only the experimental study(24.8%)but also clinical trial(16.1%)was outstandingly increased in the 1990s. Especially experimental study and clinical trial in the clinical research papers were increased more and more to the 1990s. The most common paper volume was December(35.9%)in the Ewha Medical Journal. The differences of research metho-dology among basic science, medical part and surgical part were significant(p<0.01).

The authors suggested that the Ewha Medical Journal have been changed in the aspects of methodology, but have more qualitative arguementations on research metho-dology which are indispensable activities of prospective the Ewha Medical Journal.