title: Have the focus and sophistication of research in health education changed?
abstract: This study assessed the types of research and the statistical methods used in three representative health education journals from 1994 through 2003. Editorials, commentaries, program/practice notes, and perspectives represent 17.6% of the journals' content. The most common types of articles are cross-sectional studies (27.5%), reviews (23.2%), and analytic studies (i.e., case-control, cohort, and experimental studies) (18.4%). The estimated annual percentage change across the study period in these types of articles was 3.3, -9.3, and 5.5, respectively. A significant increase was observed in use of descriptive statistics (estimated annual percentage change = 2.4), parametric test statistics (4.4), nonparametric test statistics (3.5), epidemiologic statistics (10.3), generalized linear models (6.8), validation statistics (6.7), and other statistics (8.2). Movement toward increasing use of cross-sectional studies, analytic study designs, and statistical methods--representing greater emphasis on needs assessment for health education, health education program development, and program evaluation--indicates the need for better quantitatively trained health educators.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Science, College of Health and Human Performance, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, USA. Ray_Merrill@byu.edu
authors.forename: Ray M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Merrill
authors.forename: Christopher A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Lindsay
authors.forename: Eric C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Shields
authors.forename: Julianne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stoddard
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D012107:Research Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States