• Wenban AB

• Data Collection
• Research
• Review Literature as Topic
• Subluxation

Design: Survey of the title, abstract and index terms from all original research published in peer-reviewed chiropractic journals that met this survey’s inclusion criteria, for the period 1990-99.

Main Outcome Measure: Inclusion of the term subluxation in the title, abstract or index terms of peer-reviewed, original research articles.

Results: Seven peer-reviewed chiropractic journals met the inclusion criteria for this survey: Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT), Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association (JCCA), Chiropractic Journal of Australia (CJA), Journal of Sports Chiropractic and Rehabilitation (JSCR), European Journal of Chiropractic (EJC), Chiropractic Research Journal (CRJ), and Chiropractic Technique (CT). During the period 1990-99, the term subluxation appeared in the title, abstract or index terms of 23/658 (3.5%) original research articles published in JMPT, 1/163 (0.6%) in JCCA, 9/186 (4.8%) in CJA, 6/155 (3.9%) in JSCR, 20/212 (9.4%) in CT, 36/71 (50.7%) in CRJ, and 0/74 (0%) in EJC. Overall, the mean frequency (%) of original researched focused on chiropractic subluxation and published in 1 of 7 journals during the period 1990-99 was 95/1519 (6.3%).

Conclusion: Only 6.3% of the original research published in 7 leading chiropractic scientific journals during the period 1990-99 included the term subluxation in the title, abstract or index terms. Furthermore, only 7 of the original research articles that included the term subluxation were clinical trials. The possibility that, and reasons why, subluxation-related research made up only a small percentage of the original research published in a number of leading chiropractic scientific peer-reviewed journals during recent years deserves further examination.

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