An analysis of doctoral programs of health education

American Journal of Health Studies, Spring, 2004 by Stephen J. Notaro, Thomas W. O'Rourke, James M. Eddy

METHODS AND DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES

A detailed description of the methodology is available by Notaro et. al, 2000. That study used eight variables with weighted values determined by an initial survey of scholars and leaders in the field of health education. These eight variables represent a consensus of scholars and leaders in the field of health education with regard to the key quality indicators of doctoral level health education programs. Data for the eight variables were collected for the calendar years 1993-1997 by a survey of doctoral programs of health education, computer index searches, and library searches.

Data from the second survey were collected from department heads or coordinators of the doctoral programs of health education. Twenty-eight of the 43 programs participated in this study for a response rate of 65 percent. The department heads or program coordinators of the doctoral programs of health education were asked to provide data on the following five variables with the weighted values in parenthesis: External funding (18.1%), mentoring and placement of doctoral students (13.2%), doctoral student activity (11.8%), student faculty ratio (11.5%), and student support (9.0%). Computer index searches were used to determine the number of articles published (17.3%) and citations received (9.9%) by program faculty in 81 preeminent journals of health education as identified in the literature (Laflin, Horowitz, & Nimms, 1999). Publication and citation counts include only those accessible through the computer search mechanism and may not reflect actual publication and citation counts. A library review of the 81 journals was conducted to determine the number of editorships (9.2%) by program faculty. Data were tabulated and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics are provided for each of the eight variables.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The limitations of this study are generally typical of ranking studies in other disciplines. To control for size, each program was limited to submitting, prior to data collection, the names of five faculty and 10 doctoral students as reported by the program or department heads. The journals used in this study were a set of 81 journals identified by Laflin et al. (1999) as preeminent journals in health education. The articles and citation indexes were searched by the authors' names as provided by the program or departments; and, all authors listed in an index for an article received full credit for a publication or citation because some sources list authors alphabetically making it difficult to determine which author had the greatest contribution to an article. Also, the results of this study are limited to the 28 doctoral programs of health education participating in this study.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Results are presented in the order that variables were weighted as determined by scholars and leaders in health education. The weightings are provided as percentages in parenthesis after each variable heading.