Perceptions of Quality of Journals Related to Health Education

Abstract

Faculty and chairpersons (N = 102) at 34 programs granting doctoral degrees in health education were asked to rate the quality of professional journals related to health education. The American Journal of Public Health was the highest rated journal. Health Education Quarterly was second, and Health Education Research, the only other health education journal, was rated in the top 10 (rated 7). The journals from the epidemiology area rated higher than journals from other areas. The respondents were least familiar with journals on the environment, safety, and death education.

Mapping the literature of health education: 2006–2008

“…Price and Robinson [8] point out that ''journals associated with professional organizations may be cited more frequently because they are easily available.'' Because this is the case, future studies might include journals that are not official publications of a professional association to partially mitigate this effect.…”

“…Since Schloman's study, a number of studies [7,8] and the Public Health/Health Administration Section (PH/HA) of MLA [9] have developed core journal lists for the health education field based on the authors' or others' opinion of the quality of a journal. Known as the ''prestige method,'' this is one approach to ranking journals.…”

“…Known as the ''prestige method,'' this is one approach to ranking journals. Price and Robinson [8] and the PH/HA list [9] also used Thomson Reuters/ISI's journal impact factors [10] to construct their lists, but their primary approach was not quantitative. Prestige-based lists have the advantage of providing expert opinions on the quality of journals, which is especially useful for making collection decisions about material for small but important subspecialties where quantitative evidence may be lacking.…”

Journal Impact Factor: Bibliometrics and the Journal of School Health

“…This rating was confirmed in a national survey of health education faculty and chairpersons of doctoral degree-granting programs who were asked to rank the significance of a large number of journals. 4 As noted in Table 1, Thomson ISI does not cover (not available) many school health-related journals. This indicates that the articles in these journals are perceived by them as having none to minimal impact on advancing the field of school health research.…”