Analysis pf the Language in Titles of Research Articles in Medical Sciences

Authors

Phan Banpho

Publication Date

2006-04-01

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate types, components, length, and inner elements of titles of research articles in medical sciences, including nursing science. A corpus of 992 research titles in four leading journals, from 2003 to 2005, was analyzed. Research instruments were four computer programs: the Microsoft Word for word count, Microsoft Excel for data preparation, a concordancing program for displaying concordances of the required words, and SPSS for calculating the mean and standard deviation. This analysis found that most research titles (96.17%) were indicative, and only 3.83% were informative titles. Three hundred and twenty one (33.65%) indicative titles had subtitles, which more than half (59.81%) indicating type of study. In addition, most head nouns of indicative titles were without indefinite articles (84.80%). In this corpus, important components of titles were variables (100%), population or subjects (79.44%), type of study (40.52%), and venue of study (4.03%). An average length of titles was 13.33 words (S.D. = 4.11), with a maximum of 27 and a minimum of 3 words. The top five prepositions were of 816 (82.26%), in 662 (66.73%), with 1.96 (19.76%), on 91 (9.17%), and to 78 (7.86%).

DOI

10.58837/CHULA.PASAA.38.1.3

First Page

45

Last Page

67

Recommended Citation

Banpho, Phan (2006) "Analysis pf the Language in Titles of Research Articles in Medical Sciences," PASAA: Vol. 38: Iss. 1, Article 4.
DOI: 10.58837/CHULA.PASAA.38.1.3
Available at: https://digital.car.chula.ac.th/pasaa/vol38/iss1/4