한국치위생학회지 게재논문의 연구동향 분석

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to analyze 356 papers included in the Journal of the Korean Society of Dental Hygiene between 2000 when the initial number was issued and April, 2010. The papers involved articles, treatises, theses and dissertations. Methods: According to existing literature related to paper analysis, all the journals were analyzed by year to find out the subjects of the studies, places for data gathering, the presence or absence of research funds supplied, the number of researchers, research methods, methods of data collection, themes and data analysis methods. Results: As for subjects, the largest group of the papers that numbered 69(20.7%) examined dental hygienists, and the second biggest group that numbered 65(19.5%) examined dental hygienists and students. The third greatest group that numbered 47(14.2%) examined patients at dental hospitals and clinics. Concerning places of data gathering, schools(37.1%) were the most common places where data were collected, followed by dental hospitals/clinics(31.6%) and laboratories(7.4%). In terms of research design, research studies accounted for 88.5%, and experimental studies accounted for 11.5%. Research studies were far more prevalent. Concerning themes, there were 76 kinds of concepts that the studies dealt with, and the most dominant concepts were oral health awareness and behavior, which 34 studies focused on(9.6%). 10 studies or more were concerned with dental service, oral health status, dental hygiene education, infection control, oral health education, job satisfaction and stress. As to data analysis methods, frequency analysis was most dominant, followed by Chi-square test, t-test, analysis of variance, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Most of the studies made use of quantitative research methods. Conclusions: The effort by this study to analyze the papers included in the Journal of the Korean Society of Dental Hygiene to grasp research trends in the field of dental hygiene is expected to be of some use for the determination of the right directions of dental hygiene research in the future.