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Global Research Activity on Elder Abuse: A Bibliometric Analysis (1950–2017)

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Abstract

Elder abuse is an emerging worldwide public health, human right, and social priority for governments and health policy makers. The aim of the current study was to provide an in-depth quantitative analysis of literature on elder abuse published in academic journals. A bibliometric method was implemented using Scopus database for the study period from 1950 to 2017. The search strategy utilized specific keywords to retrieve relevant documents. One thousand eight hundred seventy-two documents appeared in Scopus when using the search strategy. The annual number of publications showed a fluctuating pattern in the past four decades. Publications on elder abuse originated mainly from Northern America and Western Europe. International research collaboration on elder abuse was relatively low. The mean number of authors per document was 1.4. The Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect published almost one third of the retrieved documents. The Rush University was the most active institution and Professor Dong, X.Q. was the most active author in this field. The most frequently encountered keywords were risk factors, prevalence, intervention, prevention, dementia, and nursing homes. Physical abuse was the most common type of elder abuse studied followed by psychological and financial abuse. Elder abuse is under-researched and of limited priority in most world regions. Governments need to take into consideration preventive policies of elder abuse based on research findings.

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Data Availability

Data supporting the findings presented in the current study will be available from the corresponding author upon request.

Abbreviations

WHO:

World health organization

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank An-Najah National University for giving me the opportunity to carry out this study.

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  1. Department of Physiology, Pharmacology/Toxicology, Division of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine

    Waleed M. Sweileh

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WS: conceptualized and designed the study, interpreted the data, and wrote the manuscript.

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Sweileh, W.M. Global Research Activity on Elder Abuse: A Bibliometric Analysis (1950–2017). J Immigrant Minority Health 23, 79–87 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-020-01034-1

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