Patterns of information transfer in health education: a bibliometric analysis of the research literature.

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which health education has become a distinctly separate field of inquiry as evidenced by the patterns of information transfer in the health education research literature. Bibliometric analysis is used to determine: (1) if health education has an identifiable core of journals, (2) the extent to which health education research is derivative of research from other disciplines and (3) the extent to which research from other disciplines draws upon research published in health education journals. The results suggest that there is an identifiable core of journals that serve to characterize health education as a distinct field of inquiry. However, health education research is found to be more derivative of research from other fields than are the other comparative fields in the sample. Moreover, researchers in other disciplines use health education research less than half as often as health education uses its own research. Differences in citing patterns in journals dedicated to health education and by researchers publishing on health education topics in research journals of other areas seem to indicate that health education research is not one unified undertaking.