Research publication trends in health education journals

The study presented here reviews the trends in the publication of research reports from 1957-1978 in the official journals of four professional organizations of health education: International Journal of Health Education (IJHE), Health Education Monographs, Health Education and Journal of School Health. Each article was classified into one of five categories: programme evaluation research, general research, professional preparation, literature reviews, and other. The percentage of articles in each category was calculated and graphed in 4-5 year intervals to show the twenty-two year trends. The results of this study show that the IJHE has led in the publication of research articles. During the 22 year period 30.83% of the articles IJHE has published were research reports. IJHE also showed the largest increase (30.37%) from the earliest period to the most recent, especially in the category programme evaluation research (17%). For all four journals combined, 5.18% of the articles published were on professional preparation, 3.2% were literature reviews and 69.95% were programme descriptions, conceptual or theoretical articles and other non-research topics. Although there are trends towards an increase in the publication of research reports in health education journals, during the period covered less than one-third of the articles in any of the journals reviewed was devoted to research.