Bibliometric and Content Analysis of Scientific Outputs Relevant to Health Education and Promotion in Iran during 1998-2011

Since the aim of health research is to improve the quality of community life, the results obtained from these research could be used in health policies and practices. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the bibliometric and content analysis of research relevant to health education and promotion performed in Iran during 1998-2011.
This is a descriptive content analysis study. Data were collected from online databases (IranMedex, Medlib, SID, ISI, and PubMed), and all published articles relevant to health education and promotion in Iran up to the end of March 2011 were included in this study. In order to do content analysis a researcher-made checklist approved by experts was used for identifying the variables. Data was entered into SPSS 21 and descriptive statistics and percents were calculated.
From 1227 documents retrieved, 817 were published in Persian and 410 in English. A great share of retrieved documents belonged to the articles published in the scientific journals (87.4%). Mental health (10.7%), family planning and reproductive health (10.2 %), and chronic non-communicable diseases (10.2%) were the most frequent subject areas in research relevant to health promotion, respectively. Most of the studies were cross-sectional (52.1%), the most widely used method was simple random sampling (27.7%), and most of the studies were performed locally in provinces (83.7%).
Doing more studies by outlining the exact perspective of health promotion research in Iran and comparison of the current status of Iran with that of other countries are recommended.