The present study aims at analyzing topics of master's thesis and doctoral dissertations submitted to nursing graduate programs in Brazil from 1998 to 2000. The sample comprised abstracts of 337 thesis and 153 dissertations that were analyzed based on scheme category proposed by Carvalho (2000) to group nursing graduate scientific production. Results evidenced that research carried out addressed a great range of themes, comprehending all research lines of the three areas of the referred scheme. The Assistance and Organizational fields concentrated most of the production (45.0% and 38.8% respectively) and the Professional field relied on 16.2% of the studies. Based on the results, authors emphasize the need to bind together thematic-affinity projects in order to deepen studies and to move forward in the process of nursing knowledge construction.
nursing research; nursing education; nursing graduate