Oral history and documental investigation as a research itinerary in nursing : a bibliometric study ( 2000-2014 )

Objective: Analyse the application of thematic oral history associated with documental research catalogued in the Centre of Studies and Research in Nursing of the Brazilian Nursing Association from 2000 to 2014. Methods: Qualitative documental study. 26 thesis and 49 dissertations were considered, which adopted the thematic oral and documental history as a research itinerary and as important sources for the systematization of nursing historical knowledge. Results: We found out that Brazil Southeast region is responsible for the largest number of studies, with a total of 16 thesis and 27dissertations, followed by the South, with 9 thesis and 9 dissertations, and the Northeast region, with 10 dissertations. The chosen theoretical framework was Pierre Bourdieu, used by 22 studies, followed by Michel Lowi, Michelle Perrot, Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. Conclusion: The oral and documental history has been an important part of graduation programs in the country, expanding the creation of a network of research and researchers in nursing history.


INTRODUCTION
Historiographical debate has undergone considerable changes, especially from the twentieth century, caused by the rupture initiated in France in 1929, with a new paradigm in the historical knowledge field, which pointed to new directions regarding the historiographical production."The Annales School was the first historiographical movement born in the very field of historical research" 1:139 .The historiography of classical antiquity, which sought direct testimonies as a source for building reports, and had predominated until the end of the thirteenth century, lost its prestige in the nineteenth century.Traditional history influenced by Positivism then surfaced, focusing on the achievements of great men, statesmen, generals and also ecclesiastical personalities.History was intended to describe, only through documents, past societies and its transformations 1 .
The Annales movement produced changes in the field of history, presenting a triple possibility of historical studies: new problems, new approaches and new history objects.For Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, new problems call into question history itself, new approaches modify the traditional sectors of history and new objects bring new possibilities in the epistemological field of history 2 .Thus, under this new paradigm, the history of the twentieth century becomes a history of the present time, by the uniqueness of coexisting with living witnesses, bringing oral testimony to historians' agendas 3 .The hallmark of oral history was 1940's creation of the first formal oral history project at the University of Columbia, New York, in which Allan Nevins, a historian at Columbia University, published biographies of great figures of American history 3,4 .The movement of oral history was extended in the 1960s and 1970s, when social movements such as feminism, civil rights, anti-Vietnam protests, concern for minorities and the disadvantaged (black people and children 3 ) began to be understood and studied.
In Brazil, the installation of the first oral history programs was a cornerstone of oral history in the country: the creation of the Centre for Research and Documentation of Brazilian Contemporary History (CPDOC), supported by the Getulio Vargas Foundation in the state of Rio de Janeiro in 1973, and the Oral History Laboratory of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in 1975.
The first text published using the term "oral history" was the result of Carlos Humberto P. Correa master's dissertation, at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, entitled Oral History: theory and technique, which in 1977 outlined criteria for the definition of oral history in the tropics 5:90 .
Despite the efforts made in the 1970s, it was only in the 1980s, with the country's democratization process, that oral history really blossomed.In the 1990s, there was a significant increase in oral history, especially in 1994 and 1996, when the Brazilian Association of Oral History and the International Association of Oral History, respectively, were created 6 .
Regardless of the advancement of oral history in Brazil and in the world, there is still controversy about its terminology among scholars.For some, it is set as a subject, others present it as a technique and there are some who see it as a method.In this study it is understood that: Oral history is a set of procedures that begin with the preparation of a project and continue with the definition of a group of people (or colony) to be interviewed, with planning for conducting recordings, with transcription, with the checking of testimonies, with the authorization of their use, archiving, and [...] with the publication of the results which should, principally, return to the group that generated the interviews 7:35 .
According to Padilha, Borenstein (2005), oral history can be divided into three distinct types: oral history of life, which is derived from narratives, relying on memory; oral thematic history, which focuses on a central point that can lead to objectivity, allowing documental interlocution and thematic delimitation; and oral tradition, which deals with more detailed descriptions of everyday life 8 .
In this paper we focus on studies regarding history in the nursing research itinerary, especially the thematic oral history and documental research.In accordance with Meihy; Holanda, "thematic oral history is always of a social character and interviews do not stand alone or in single versions in it".Thus, it is common that oral history studies are associated with documental research 9:38 .Documental research, according to Sá-Silva, Almeida and Guindani, has been valued by researchers, especially from the humanities and social sciences, for realizing the importance and value of the information that may be collected from documents 9 .They highlight that this type of research allows the understanding of the issue under study, as well as the reconstruction of historical and sociocultural contextualisation of a particular fact or moment.Documents are an important source for the documental research that is focused on the search for information on materials that have never received scientific analytical treatment, such as newspapers, reports, photographs, minutes and others.For some studies, documents are characterized as the primary source of research 8,10 .When reporting on the importance of choosing the method used in documental research, the authors say that it is a method of choice and data verification; seeking access to relevant sources and, as such, is an integral part of investigation heuristics 11 .
Therefore, the thematic oral history and documental research have been used by researchers in the development of their studies.In nursing, historical research has been gaining strength among researchers from 1980, "with the concern to understand nursing as part of a historical, social, cultural, political and gender process" 12:534 .
It can also be noted that in recent years, nurses have used thematic oral history associated with documental research, as

Oral history and documental investigation
Teodosio SSS, Silva ER, Padilha MI, Mazera MS, Borenstein MS a research itinerary in their thesis, dissertations, monographs, books and articles.The databases are registering increasingly frequent records of these studies.
Based on this understanding, the study's core theme covers historical research in nursing, seeking to highlight the expansion of research focused on thematic oral history and documental research, as well as its importance to the scientific knowledge of the profession and to the rescue of its memory.It is hoped that this study will contribute to the increase of historical research in nursing, in general, and particularly of oral history.Thus, to justify the study, we start from the understanding that the investigative method of oral history is presented as a contribution to nursing studies, allowing the exploration of new issues and themes, enabling new perspectives on the history of the profession, the rescue of its memory and the construction of its future.
This study aims to analyse the application of thematic oral history associated to documental research published by Brazilian nursing and catalogued by the Centre for Studies and Research in Nursing of the Brazilian Nursing Association (CEPEn-ABEn), from 2000 to 2014.

METHODS
Understanding the importance of history in recording nursing memories, a qualitative study was developed, using the method of documental research in order to identify the scientific production of nurses (thesis and dissertations) on the methodological approach of thematic oral history and documental research.
The study was guided by the following question: what is the application of thematic oral history associated with documental research in studies published by the Brazilian nursing and catalogued by the Centre for Studies and Research in Nursing of the Brazilian Nursing Association (CEPEn-ABEn) in the period from 2000-2014?
The research sources were dissertations and thesis registered in the catalogue "Information on research and researchers in nursing at the Centre for Studies and Research in Nursing of the Brazilian Nursing Association (CEPEn-ABEn)", in its online version 13 .
Thesis and dissertations which adopted the thematic and documental oral history in the research itinerary as important documental sources for the systematization of historical knowledge of nursing were considered.
The sources are in the origin, constituting the starting point, the base, the fulcrum of historiographical construction [...].Thus, the historical sources are not the source of the history, that is, it is not from them that history germinates and flows.They, while records and evidence of the historical acts, are sources of our historical knowledge, that is, the knowledge that we produce about history is germinated and is supported by them 14:29 .CEPEN a was chosen because it is a database of scientific studies, to which the thesis and dissertations of nursing programs advocated in Brazil are forwarded, being recognized for its work on the organization and preservation of nursing historical documents.
This study was conducted through the following steps: identification of the theme and guiding question; establishing the sample selection criteria; search and selection of studies in the database; tabulation of data in a spreadsheet, generation of charts and graphs for analysis and discussion of results.Established as inclusion criteria were: dissertations and thesis produced by nurses, whose methodological approach encompassed oral history and documental research, included in CEPEn catalogues, from 2000 to 2014 in Brazil.Exclusion criteria were defined as: studies using the oral history of other modalities such as oral history of life and called oral tradition, biographies; and production by international authors.
The period was set from 2000, the year when CEPEn began to register thesis and dissertations online, to 2014, being the last year of dissertations and thesis defences recorded in the catalogue.The search for material occurred from November 2014 to February 2016.
Initially the search was through consultation led by the subject index, using the terminology: history and history of nursing.In the survey of sources, it was observed that some catalogued studies did not have the characteristics of historical research, as well as others that, despite presenting a methodological design of historical research, did not appear as such.So we carefully read some abstracts that by deduction had some relation to the theme of history.
In the data collection, 75 studies were identified in CEPEn with publications concerning oral history and documental research.The flow chart below shows the path of data collection.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
First, it is important to note that the search results describe only the nursing scientific production registered in the CEPEn database from 2000 to 2014 and those studies that adopted the methodological contribution of thematic oral history and documental research, therefore not including all thesis and dissertations published in this period regarding Brazilian nursing in general and historical research in particular.
Concerning the type of work, 26 doctoral thesis and 49 master's dissertations were identified in CEPEn (Figure 1).It is observed that, even considering the expansion of doctoral programs in nursing, there is still a predominance of publishing thematic and documental oral history for dissertations in master's programs.This fact can be explained both by the large quantity of existing Masters Courses in Brazil, as well as the time involved in preparation and defending dissertations being less than that of thesis, enabling publication in a shorter period.Although The quantity of thesis and dissertations catalogued in CEPEn, from 2000 to 2014, presented in the graphs above, shows that the production of dissertations has fluctuated with moments of growth and decline.However, it is noticeable that from 2005 the publication of thesis has shown a continuous and steady growth that can also be equated to dissertations, considering the defence time and the number of graduate programs in each of the levels.To illustrate the growth of graduate programs (MA: Academic Master, MP: Professional Master, DO: PhD) in Nursing in Brazil we can say that "in May 2013, the area had 63 post-graduate stricto sensu programs (26MA and DO, 02DO, 21MA and 14MP), totalling 89 courses (28DO, 47MA and 14MP), distributed as follows by region: 2.3% (02MA) in the North; 20.2% (05DO, 11MA and 02MP) in the Northeast; 9.0% (02DO, 05MA and 01MP) in the Central-West; 49.4% (15DO, 21MA and 08MP) in the Southeast and 19.1% (06DO, 08MA and 03MP) in the South.This quantity of stricto sensu Nursing courses represented 1.7% of total Brazilian post-graduation courses and 9.7% of the Health Sciences area" 15:84 .
It is worth noting that this growth is consistent both with the strengthening of post-graduate nursing as with the advancement of Brazilian oral nursing history research.However, the production of Thesis and Dissertations in the history of nursing area still needs to be further stimulated, especially with regard to oral history and documental research.
To evaluate the most prevalent regions in terms of historical studies using oral history and documental research, we present Chart 2 below: By observing chart 2, we identified that the Brazilian Southeast is the geographic region with the largest number of studies, accounting for a total of 16 thesis and 27 dissertations in nursing post-graduation programs with the themes mentioned, followed by the South, with 9 thesis and 9 dissertations and the Northeast with 10 dissertations.
With regard to the institutions in which the studies were prepared, Chart 3 below reinforces the dominance of Universities and Nursing Schools in the South and Southeast as observed in the previous figure.The predominance of thesis and dissertations in the Southeast adheres to the fact that most post-graduation programs are located in this region.And in line with this data, the predominance of research groups in nursing and health history also ensure this concentration.
Analysis of the two charts above reinforces previous studies that recognize the advancement of publications about the history

Oral history and documental investigation
Teodosio SSS, Silva ER, Padilha MI, Mazera MS, Borenstein MS of nursing in Brazil, but still with a predominance in the South and Southeast regions, thus pointing to the need to expand these studies in other Universities and Nursing Schools from other regions of the country 16,17 .
Another piece of data analysed was the distribution of thesis and dissertations according to the theoretical framework and present in the summaries.Note that this information has limitations, considering that not all studies outlined which theoretical framework was utilized.
Regarding the theoretical framework adopted by nursing researchers in the area of history, the supremacy of Pierre Bourdieu was perceived, being used by 22 thesis studies and dissertations, while some of these researchers used this author along with Michel Lowi, Michelle Perrot and Karl Marx.The theorist Michel Foucault was used by 6 studies.Chart 4 makes this predominance clear, with the other authors used less in the studied works, such as Gramsci, Freidson, Chauí, Nobert, Holbwacs, Minayo, among others.We also note that many studies (26) did not mention the theoretical framework that was adopted in the investigation.Padilha; Borenstein, in an article on the historical production of nursing, have warned of the need to clarify the studied reference from the perspective of socialization of knowledge of the history of nursing in Brazil 18:673 .

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
This study sought to highlight the adoption and expansion of historical research in nursing, principally oral history, classified as thematic and documental, and its importance to the historical knowledge of the profession and to the rescue of its memory.Although it is recognized that there are other methods to study historical research in nursing, we opted for a study of bibliometric nature considering the scope of the study.Some challenges are still to be faced in the historical research of nursing, one of which is recording the adoption of the theoretical and methodological framework.It was also observed that in the production of both thesis and dissertations, a significant number of publications did not make explicit the adoption of the historical method or the theoretical framework that supported this type of research.This is a task that must be fulfilled in view of the need for scientific recognition and socialization of historical research in nursing.Another challenge is to encourage the creation of a historical research line in post-graduate programs, fundamental for expansion and strengthening of historical research in Brazilian nursing.
The limitation of this study should be remembered, having been carried out in a single database, but the results can be considered relevant for the analysis they generate, enabling new and more comprehensive studies.It is suggested that in future work the search be expanded to other databases.
It is hoped that the results of this work could contribute to the identification of programs that have adopted research in oral history as a research itinerary in nursing, providing researchers in the field the opportunity to exchange experiences and perhaps the creation of a network of research and researchers in the history of nursing, facilitating the realization of inter-institutional work.
It also entails that oral history in nursing can further advance as a research topic and be configured as a wide area of investigation through oral research in its different modalities, as by leaning on its historical trajectory, nursing can give rise to new possibilities of the construction of its future.
Regarding the studied themes, it was found that thematic oral history was predominant, an important instrument in order to allow a broadening of study objects.Data analysis showed that the history of courses, notably those of undergraduate nursing and hospitals, are the most present in thematic publications.It is clear, albeit to a lesser extent, the choice of other issues related to: the construction of political strategies for occupying positions of power and the political organization of the category; gender issues; practice and professional identity, and nursing care.This study corroborates previous research in which "the history of nursing articles analysed by Padilha et al (2013) identified five major areas of knowledge production in the history of health and nursing: professional identity of nursing; institutionalization of nursing, nursing schools; organizational entities and nursing specialties" 19:698 .

Chart 1 .
Oral history and documental investigationTeodosio SSS, Silva ER, Padilha MI, Mazera MS, Borenstein MS the CEPEN catalogue went online in 2001, it contains the dissertations and thesis defences of 2000, which constitute in the results of this study, as per the Chart 1. Demonstration of the number of Thesis and Dissertations by defence year.Source: Research data, Florianópolis, 2016.

Chart 2 .
Thesis and dissertations according to the geographic region of Post-Graduation Programs.Source: Research data, Florianópolis, 2016.

Chart 3 .
Thesis and Dissertations Statement in accordance with the Nursing Post-Graduation Programs.Source: Research data, Florianópolis, 2016.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Flow chart representing the search for studies in the field of oral history published by the Brazilian nursing included in CEPEn catalogues, from 2000 to 2014, Florianópolis, 2016.

Chart 4 .
Thesis and Dissertations according to the theoretical framework adopted.Source: Research data, Florianópolis, 2016.

Table 1 .
Statement of thesis and dissertations by title, type, year and institution, found in CEPEn database.