Mapping Intellectual Structure of Health Literacy Area Based on Co-Word Analysis in Web of Science Database during the Years 1993-2017

• Main Authors: Fatemeh Baji, Fereydoun Azadeh, Parastoo Parsaei-Mohammadi, Shoukat Parmah
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: Vesnu Publications 2018-08-01
• Series: مدیریت اطلاعات سلامت
• Subjects: Health Literacy; Social Networks; Database, Bibliometrics
• Online Access: http://him.mui.ac.ir/index.php/him/article/view/3577

Introduction: Creating an image of the conceptual structure of health literacy area, as well as the study of interdisciplinary and the relationship between its domains seems necessary. The present study examined the intellectual structure of health literacy area in Web of Science database using co-word analysis. Methods: This was a scientometrics research and bibliometric study, carried out using co-word analysis method. Social network analysis was used for this purpose. The research community compiled all the relevant scientific literature on the field of health literacy in Web of Science during the years 1993-2017. For data analysis, network integrity and centrality indices were used. Results: Clustering co-efficient (7.17) and network density (0.58) were high in the resulted network. Moreover, the intellectual structure of this domain consisted of eight subject clusters. Health care, psychiatry and psychology, public health, social sciences, communications, health services, and medical education had the highest levels of centrality throughout the entire network. Conclusion: The results show that the intellectual structure of the health literacy domain in general has an integrate structure with a proper relationship between its concepts and subjects. This shows the essence of this area, which is able to establish a consistent and sustained relationship with the social sciences and humanities as a branch of medical science. Finally, the results of this study will help health literacy researchers to understand the research trend of this area in future studies based on the identified areas of influence.