Research topics and trends in medical education by social network analysis

Abstract

BackgroundAs studies analyzing the networks and relational structures of research topics in academic fields emerge, studies that apply methods of network and relationship analysis, such as social network analysis (SNA), are drawing more attention. The purpose of this study is to explore the interaction of medical education subjects in the framework of complex systems theory using SNA and to analyze the trends in medical education.MethodsThe authors extracted keywords using Medical Subject Headings terms from 9,379 research articles (162,866 keywords) published in 1963–2015 in PubMed. They generated an occurrence frequency matrix, calculated relatedness using Weighted Jaccard Similarity, and analyzed and visualized the networks with Gephi software.ResultsNewly emerging topics by period units were identified as historical trends, and 20 global-level topic clusters were obtained through network analysis. A time-series analysis led to the definition of five historical periods: the waking phase (1963–1975), the birth phase (1976–1990), the growth phase (1991–1996), the maturity phase (1997–2005), and the expansion phase (2006–2015).ConclusionsThe study analyzed the trends in medical education research using SNA and analyzed their meaning using complex systems theory. During the 53-year period studied, medical education research has been subdivided and has expanded, improved, and changed along with shifts in society’s needs. By analyzing the trends in medical education using the conceptual framework of complex systems theory, the research team determined that medical education is forming a sense of the voluntary order within the field of medicine by interacting with social studies, philosophy, etc., and establishing legitimacy and originality.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-018-1323-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Knowledge syntheses in medical education: A bibliometric analysis

“…To this end, BEME reports a 50% increase in the number of reviews undertaken by authors over a recent five-year period. 9 Over the last decade, broad bibliometric reviews of the literature have been undertaken to identify trends in medical education publishing, [10][11][12] recognize the most cited articles in the field, 13 characterize author networks across international borders, 14 and describe associated social media attention. 15,16 While these studies provide important insights into the overall landscape of the medical education literature, they fail to fully illuminate knowledge syntheses and their characteristics.…”

Visualization of clinical teaching citations using social network analysis

“…Therefore, we can present science map in medical education by robust evidence. Young (2018) unlike our study found that "Computer-Assisted Instruction," "Personal Sta ng and Scheduling," "User-Computer Interface," "Professional Competency," "Accreditation", "Program Evaluation," and "Educational Measurement," appearing in the eld, he concluded that in the years (2006-2015) medical technological devices have been extensively incorporated into medical practice (29). Our ndings supports the arguments made of Hartzband and Groopman (2009) in regard to turning to the principles of Oslerian medicine embracing the humanistic medicine (31).…”

“…We argue that based on the educational and scienti c background of the US, the UK, and the Netherlands in pioneering medical education research centers (16) the result of our visualization is rational. Previous SNA studies in medical education also revealed that the United States, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands are the leading countries in scienti c production (14,(28)(29)(30).…”

Analisis Trend Topik Pengembangan Rekayasa Perangkat Lunak dalam mendukung Strategi Kurikulum Perguruan Tinggi

“…Pengembangan pendidikan saat ini mewakili peluang untuk meningkatkan kualitas program (Majid, 2016) dan lulusan serta mengarahkannya ke arah globalisasi dan internasionalisasi (Miragaia dan Soares, 2017). Pengaruh desain kurikulum pendidikan dilapangan terhadap pengalaman mahasiswa (Helgevold et al, 2015), dosen, kapasitas lembaga pendidikan (Lawson et al, 2015) merupakan solusi potensial (Ji et al, 2018) untuk mengatasi tantangan pendidikan dimasa depan (Cai, Bo, dan Hsiao, 2018).…”