Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the trend of nursing research by analyzing the doctoral dissertations in one college of nursing in Korea. Method: The areas of research, the methodological characteristics, and theories used in the research were explored in all doctoral dissertations (n=120) published from 1989 to 2006. Result: Mainly "Nursing" has been studied (44.9%) among four meta-paradigms of nursing science. The "client" domain (46.7%) and the "practice" domain (41.7%) were most frequently studied in type of nursing knowledge. The main purpose of the thesis was to develop nursing interventions and examine the effectiveness of the practice (40.8%) in quantitative research. Almost all (94.7%) of the qualitative dissertation studies were to explore phenomena in the nursing field. Almost half of the dissertations (43.9%) were an experimental design, 34.7% were a model construction, and 15.8% were a qualitative design. The majority of dissertations (83.3%) were to apply the specific theory and almost half (43.8%) studied borrowed theories from other fields. Conclusion: It is necessary to develop more rigorous and various research designs such a longitudinal design, or randomized controlled trial and this will lead to expanding the body of nursing knowledge.