Purpose : This descriptive study was performed to analyse the trends of nursing interventional studies in adult nursing area. Method : All interventional studies of 'Journal of Korean Academy of Adult Nursing Society', fifty three articles, from 1989 to 2000 were collected and reviewed. Result : The research subject were patients in 38(66.7%) and 81.8% of researches was performed in hospital environment. There was only one true experimental design and most of articles(79.2%) were designed by quasi-experimental method. Only 17% of articles have theoretical framework and 73.6% of articles described research hypotheses. The data collection methods for variables were as follows : Psychosocial measurement 60.8%, physiological measurement 25.7%, and observation 13.5%, respectively. Lecture(16.7%), audio-visual(16.7%), and book, pamphlet, or leaf1ets(13.6%) were the most frequently used instruments of the interventions. Behavioral domain(60.3%) and Physiological : Basic domain(29.3%) were the most common, when the interventions were classified by Nursing Intervention Classification Physiological(50.8%) and psychosocial variables(49.2%) were the two major dependent variables. Conclusion : Considering the above results obtained, the nursing intervention studies in adult nursing area have been tested with quasi-experimental studies through clinical trials. For the development of clinical nursing practice and advancement of nursing theories, the amount of interventional studies should be increased and the quality of research methods refined more to develop nursing science and practice in adult nursing area.