Perspective: 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.