Qualitative Analysis: Alcohol Use in Korean Immigrant Women

The PLOS One scoping review mapped a thin, U.S.-centric evidence base of seven primary studies and identified acculturation, religion, and social networks as dominant sociocultural influences on alcohol use in Korean immigrant women. Teams can reproduce and extend that synthesis using a reproducible qualitative workflow to extract themes, quotes, and cross-segment comparisons rapidly.

• The PLOS One review (published July 14, 2026) screened 12, 547 records and included only seven primary studies, all conducted in the U.S.
• Consistent themes across the included studies are acculturation, religion, and social networks, while measures and findings about acculturation are mixed.
• Practical next steps: prioritize targeted qualitative work in underrepresented geographies (no Canadian studies were included), standardize acculturation measures, and use a reproducible pipeline to extract quotes and compare segments.
• A reproducible 7-step workflow (ingest, harmonize, auto-code, align codebook, cross-segment analysis, extract evidence, share) can reproduce the review and accelerate stakeholder reporting.

The PLOS One scoping review mapped evidence on alcohol use in Korean immigrant women, finding only seven primary U.S. studies and three dominant sociocultural influences: acculturation, religion, and social networks. Full source: PLOS One.

• Why it matters: a small, heterogeneous evidence base (7 studies) produces mixed findings on acculturation and points to consistent roles for religion and peer networks.
• Practical payoff: reproducible qualitative workflows can surface where evidence is thin, extract actionable quotes for intervention design, and guide new primary data collection (for example, targeted interviews in Canada).

This table summarizes key metadata and thematic findings from the PLOS One scoping review.

The review used a 5-stage Arksey & O’Malley framework with PRISMA-ScR reporting. Last search: May 20, 2025.

• Inclusion criteria: peer-reviewed primary studies in English from Canada, U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand; adults (18 and older); focus on Korean women and alcohol.
• Search strategy: combination of Korean identity and alcohol terms with country filters, supplemented by screening the first 10 pages of Google Scholar.
• Analysis: inductive thematic extraction with iterative code refinement and team review, following the authors' cited approach (Gottlieb et al.).
• Limitations noted by the authors: geographic concentration in the U.S., small number of studies (7), heterogeneous measures of acculturation, and no formal quality appraisal.

This 7-step checklist reproduces and extends the PLOS review using Evidano.

• 1) Import corpus: PDFs, transcripts, and survey spreadsheets into Evidano; tag by country, year, and sample.
• 2) Clean and harmonize: apply a custom dictionary for Korean terms, redact PII, and run translations if needed.
• 3) Initial auto-coding: run thematic extraction to generate candidate themes, set sensitivity to capture low-frequency but important codes.
• 4) Codebook alignment: import or build a codebook (acculturation dimensions, religion, networks, stressors) and re-apply AI-assisted coding to standardize labels.
• 5) Cross-segment analysis: compare themes by nativity and generation, religion, and geography; generate co-occurrence networks for acculturation and binge drinking.
• 6) Extract evidence: pull representative quotes, frequency counts, and visualizations such as word clouds and hierarchical codes for reports.
• 7) Share and iterate: export stakeholder summaries and use Evidano’s chat-over-documents to answer ad-hoc questions during dissemination meetings.

The PLOS One scoping review (published July 14, 2026) highlights a thin, U.S.-centric evidence base of seven studies and consistent sociocultural signals around acculturation, religion, and social networks. For teams planning interviews or secondary syntheses, a reproducible qualitative pipeline saves time and raises analytic rigor.

Ready to operationalize this? Upload your corpus, run thematic and cross-segment analyses, and produce stakeholder reports in a single platform. Start a pilot, book a demo at Evidano, or Try Evidano for free.