Mapping the literature of health education: 2006-2008.

Objectives: The study updates Schloman's 1997 study, "Mapping the Literature of Health Education." The authors identify an updated list of core health education journals and determine the coverage of these journals by electronic indexes.

Methods: Citations from four source journals for the years 2006 to 2008 were analyzed using the established methodology of the "Mapping the Literature of Allied Health Project." The cited journals were divided into three zones of productivity by using Bradford's Law of Scattering.

Results: There were 19,907 citations in 602 source articles. Journal articles were the most commonly cited format type. Of the 1,896 journal titles cited, 20 (1.1%) made up the core journals. Together, the fields of medicine, health education, and psychology accounted for 85.0% of the journals in the core. Self-citation was found to be a common practice in the source journals. Scopus had the broadest journal coverage of the indexes examined.

Conclusions: The results of this study provide a new picture of the health education literature: The volume has grown significantly, cites older materials, and relies less on sexual health journals and more on psychology journals.