Content Analysis Application in Nursing: A Synthetic Knowledge Synthesis Meta-Study.

Theoretical issues: With the explosive growth in the research literature production, the need for new approaches to structure knowledge emerged. Method: Synthetic content analysis was used in our meta-study. Results and discussion: Our meta-study showed that content analysis is frequently used in nursing research in a very wide spectrum of applications. The trend of its use is positive and it is used globally in a variety of research settings. The synthetic content analysis used in our study showed to be a very helpful tool in performing knowledge synthesis, replacing many of the routine activities of conventional synthesis with automated activities this making such studies more economically viable and easier to perform.