This paper aims at characterizing research in Health areas in relation to the processes in use for the gathering of data, and it also proposes a system of categories for their classification. For that reason, 1,741 articles have been selected from fascicles edited between 2001 and 2003, of 46 indexed national journals. The classification system forms a matrix that identifies two ways and six categories of processes: the direct mode, comprising the categories of the inquiring (IN), perceptive (PE), analytic (AN) and experimental (EX) processes, and the indirect mode, comprising the appropriative-transcriptive (AP-T) and the appropriative-applicative (AP-A) processes. The occurrence of each category, in relation to the totality of publications, corresponds to, respectively, 30.0%, 7.0%, 31.1% and 15.7% in the direct mode, and 21.8% and 1.1% in the indirect mode. From the discrimination of process in the decreasing rank of relative frequency corresponding to four different groups of articles results the following profiles: Public/Collective Health group (n=922): AN, IN, AP-T, EX, PE, AP-A; Nursing group (n=369): IN, AP-T, PE, AN, EX, AP-A; Dentistry group (n=220): EX, AN, AP-T, IN, PE, AP-A; Physical Education group (n=134): AN, IN, EX, AP-T, PE, AP-A. According to these tendencies, the consonance scores for the above groups correspond to 8 (Public/Collective Health group), 3 (Nursing group), 6 (Dentistry group) and 7 (Physical Education group). This study suggests the possibility that the identified classification system could be applied to research in other fields as a type of operational characterization.
Research; data gathering; methodology; investigation techniques; Health
