Journal of Physical Therapy Education: Birth to 16 Years

Journal of Physical Therapy Education, Winter 2003 by Domholdt, Elizabeth, Siefert, Julie, Graham, Cecilia L, Ritzline, Pamela D

Background and Purpose. The inaugural issue of the Journal of Physical Therapy Education was published in 1987 by the Education Section of the American Physical Therapy Association. The purpose of this article is to describe the evolution of the Journal and its contents across its first 16 years of publication. Sample. The 353 indexable items found in the 37 issues of the Journal published between 1987 and 2002 were reviewed. Methods. Each article was reviewed by one of two authors to determine the article topic and type of contribution. If applicable, the type of academic program, type of research, and research sample were also determined. Trends across four 4-year phases were also studied. Results. The journal has reflected the contributions of 34 different board members and 243 primary authors affiliated with 155 institutions. Teaching/learning methods, clinical education, and curriculum were the three most frequently addressed topics. Research articles were the most common (63%) type of article published. Physical therapist preparation programs were the most common (88%) type of academic program addressed within articles. Quantitative descriptive research was the most common (36%) type of research represented and program students (46%) were the most frequent research sample. Important trends across time included an increase in research articles and a decrease in method/model articles; an increase in articles about graduate physical therapist preparation programs and a decrease in those about baccalaureate programs; and a more even distribution of research methods, with a decrease in quantitative descriptive research and an increase in qualitative descriptive work and in articles in which differences between study groups were analyzed. Discussion and Conclusion. The trends in article types and research methods reflect a maturation of the scholarship of physical therapy education across the 16years in which the Journal of Physical Therapy Education has been published.

Key Words: Education, Physical therapy.

INTRODUCTION

Journals are a time-tested und revered form of learning. They are gifts of knowledge and experience from the past on which to improve the present and prepare for the future. The challenge before us, then, is to develop a climate of scholarship that will allow the journal not merely to endure, hut to flourish.1(p3)

These 1987 words of Samuel B Feitelberg, then president of the American Physical Therapy Association's (APTA) Section for Education (now known as the Education Section), marked the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Physical Therapy Education. Leaders of the Education Section had for years been convinced that such a journal was needed-but the Section lacked the financial resources to make such an undertaking possible (Samuel B Feitelberg, personal communication). Feitelberg's vigorous, personalized, fundraising efforts succeeded in raising the capital needed to launch the journal: More than 100 individual members of APTA and a few physical therapy practices contributed to this effort.2 Initially published in 1987 as a single-issue volume of 44 pages, the most recent full volume (2002) of the Journal consisted of three issues with a total of 227 pages. Initially accessible only to Education Section members, today the contents of the Journal are retrievable to a worldwide audience through the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) electronic database.3 Viewed along these three dimensions alone-publication frequency, issue size, and electronic retrievability of journal contents-the Journal of Physical Therapy Education can be said to be flourishing at the age of 16 years. However, a more complete assessment of the contributions of the Journal to the climate of scholarship in, and to the body of knowledge of, physical therapy education has never been published.

Analyzing the journals within a profession is an established method of tracking trends in the development of the body of knowledge of physical therapy.4-16 Collectively, these 13 studies demonstrate a high level of interest in using the literature of physical therapy to understand the development of the profession and its body of knowledge. Although these articles provide a great deal of insight into the development of the body of knowledge in physical therapy in general,4-12 as well as in focused areas such as ethics,13 pediatrics,14 knee and back dysfunction,15,16 and use of electrical stimulation,15,16 we could find no published studies analyzing the body of literature in physical therapy education.

PURPOSE

The purposes of this study, therefore, were: (1) to describe the nature of the Journal of Physical Therapy Education across its first 16 years of publication, (2) to identify influential individuals who contributed to the production of the Journal and influential individuals and institutions that have contributed to the content of the Journal across the years, (3) to characterize the content and methods used within articles published in the Journal, and (4) to analyze content and method trends across time.