A Content Analysis of Health Education Teaching Strategy/Idea Articles: 1970–1998

Abstract

A content analysis of health education teaching strategy/idea articles was conducted to determine the foci and trend of topic areas, teaching activities, target population, instructional objectives, and information about contributing author(s). All of the strategy/idea articles published by the Journal of Health Education (JOHE) (n=390) and the Journal of School Health (JOSH) (n=90) as of December 1998 were analyzed. Intercoder reliability was 92.6% and intracoder reliability was 95.7%. Various health education topics had been covered; however, the topic areas did not change much over nearly three decades. A variety of teaching activities had been introduced in both journals, with JOHE articles being more diverse. Many of the articles in both journals introduced several teaching and learning activities to teach one topic area. Student population was most often targeted. Significantly more JOSH articles than JOHE articles identified instructional objectives and the target population. University faculty members were the major body of contributors. It is recommended that in the future more topic areas should be covered and more population groups should be targeted. Future articles should provide the instructional objectives, identify the target population, and indicate the activity effectiveness. Authors other than university faculty should be encouraged to contribute innovative teaching strategies/ideas.