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Is there still gender bias in nursing research? An update
Author(s) -
Polit Denise F.,
Beck Cheryl Tatano
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
research in nursing and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1098-240X
pISSN - 0160-6891
DOI - 10.1002/nur.21514
Subject(s) - generalizability theory , specialty , nursing research , psychology , medicine , nursing , demography , clinical psychology , family medicine , developmental psychology , sociology
Data from 300 studies published in four research journals in 2010–2011 were analyzed to assess whether nurse researchers continue to oversample females. One‐third of the studies had samples that were 100% female and, on average, 74% of all study participants were female. As was found for studies published 5 years earlier, the bias against male participants was consistent across studies differing in methods, specialty areas, funding, and sample characteristics. Studies with male first authors, however, were significantly less likely to have biased samples. Authors of only 23.6% of studies with mixed‐sex samples provided information about sex differences in outcomes. Because of gender bias, the evidence base for nursing practice may suffer from problems with generalizability. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Res Nurs Health 36:75–83, 2013