A descriptive analysis of articles in the journal of Social and Preventive Medicine (Soz Präventivmed): 1980-1990.

This study provides a descriptive image of the work published in Soz Präventivmed between 1980 and 1990, and analyses certain trends. All articles of this period were categorized and recorded in a data base for: language of publication, city of location and affiliation of first author, sponsor (funding body), citation in Medline, regions and population concerned, type of article and subject matter. Over the decade, we note a reduction in the number of articles with a corresponding increase in their page length, and a progressive increase in the number of articles in English when compared with the two principal languages, German (1/2) and French (1/3). A majority of authors have university affiliations. Studies with original results comprise on average 44.6% of all publications, a tendency which gradually decreases over time. The proportion of epidemiological studies, a majority of which are descriptive studies, has increased progressively since 1980. Among the twelve categories of subject matter chosen as indicators some, such as health services research and research on elderly persons, appear more frequently during the first half of the decade, and others, such as heart disease, cancer epidemiology and AIDS, appear during the second half.