Content Analysis of Papers Published in Educational Journals with High Impact Factors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to carry out a content analysis on the papers published in high-impact educational journals between 2009 and 2014 and to identify the trends over the selected years. The criteria for the analysis were; number of authors, time between the submission and publication of the papers, keywords, the field and rationale of the study, sample size, descriptions of participants, data collection tools and analysis, and software. The current study was designed as a descriptive content analysis study and utilized a purposive sampling technique. A total of  789 papers were selected from the “Journal of Educational Psychology”, “Educational Psychologist”, “Educational Researcher” and “American Education Research Journal”. Content analysis was employed to analyze the collected data. The results of the analyses showed that the most commonly studied fields were educational psychology, linguistic properties and mathematics in the four journals. In terms of the content, the rationales for writing the papers were generally related to gaps in the literature and theoretical discussion. It was found that generally, studies involving research were conducted with elementary/high school students and data was collected from large samples (larger than 10000) using achievement tests and questionnaires. It was revealed that concerning the trends in data analysis methods, there was a similar pattern from 1970s to date, and generally, multilevel modelling was used when appropriate to the data sets. This situation indicates standard data analyses are essential for researchers. From the findings of the current study, it is recommended for researchers to work with heterogenous sample and various types of participants together (family, teacher, peer, etc.).