Identifying the Field of Health Communication

Abstract

This empirical investigation addresses four paradigmatically framed research questions to illuminate the epistemological status of the field of health communication, systematically addressing the limitations of existing disciplinary introspections. A content analysis of published health communication research indicated that the millennium marked a new stage of health communication research with a visible shift onto macro-level communication of health information among nonhealth professionals. The analysis also revealed the emergence of a paradigm around this particular topic area, with its contributing scholars predominantly sharing postpositivistic thought traditions and cross-sectional survey-analytic methodologies. More interdisciplinary collaborations and meta-theoretical assessments are needed to facilitate a continued growth of this evolving paradigm, which may advance health communication scholars in their search for a disciplinary identity.

Notes

¹We refer to Health Communication and Journal of Health Communication as the two flagship journals of the field.

²Because of too many cells with counts <5, the departmental affiliation variables were collapsed into three categories: communication, medicine, and others.

³More than half of the sampled articles were published in other journals. What is certain is that despite the findings of our content analysis, it is important to be careful not to equate the research that appears in the Journal of Health Communication with “the field.”