Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Toledo, OH 43606, USA.
Am J Occup Ther. 2011 May-Jun;65(3):338-45. doi: 10.5014/ajot.2011.000869.
The history of articles in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy and its predecessors reflects trends and changes in professional terminology and the thoughts underlying that terminology. In this study, we investigate use of occupation, activity, and related terms across 9 decades of occupational therapy literature from the 1920s to the 2000s. The literature for 3 years of each of the 9 decades was scanned electronically. A random numbers table was used to equalize the number of words across decades, and a computer search function was used to determine each term's frequency of use for each decade. Results indicated that the term occupation was widely used in the 1920s but then declined until the 1980s. With a rapid increase in use in the 2000s, the term occupation actually appeared more often than it did in the 1920s. The term activity appeared infrequently in the 1920s but gained popularity from the 1930s to the 1960s. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the use of both terms was quite low. This study shows that basic occupational therapy terminology has fluctuated dramatically over time. Given the essential link between terminology and theory, these changes arguably reflect authors' and editors' changing viewpoints on the profession's fundamental nature.
美国职业治疗杂志及其前身中的文章历史反映了专业术语的趋势和变化，以及该术语背后的思想。在这项研究中，我们调查了职业治疗文献 90 年来（从 20 世纪 20 年代到 21 世纪）使用职业、活动和相关术语的情况。每个十年的文献都进行了 3 年的电子扫描。随机数表用于平衡每个十年的字数，计算机搜索功能用于确定每个术语在每个十年中的使用频率。结果表明，“职业”一词在 20 世纪 20 年代被广泛使用，但随后在 20 世纪 80 年代下降。在 21 世纪的使用率迅速增加的情况下，“职业”一词的出现频率实际上高于 20 世纪 20 年代。“活动”一词在 20 世纪 20 年代很少使用，但从 20 世纪 30 年代到 60 年代开始流行。从 70 年代到 90 年代，这两个术语的使用都相当低。本研究表明，基本职业治疗术语在不同时期有很大的波动。鉴于术语和理论之间的重要联系，这些变化可以说反映了作者和编辑对该专业基本性质的观点变化。
