An Analysis of Research Trends in Dental Hygiene in the Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society

This study attempts to identify trends in dental hygiene research by analyzing dental hygiene-related papers published in the Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial Cooperation Society. A total of 90 dental hygiene-related papers published over the past 10 years (from 2011 to December 2020) were analyzed. Research trends were treated as real numbers and percentages by analysis content. Keyword analysis listed the keywords presented in green and visualized as pictures through word clouds. In the academic categories, social dental hygiene was the highest researched subject at 73.3%, followed by clinical dental hygiene (14.4%), basic dental hygiene (8.9%), and educational dental hygiene (3.3%). Considering the research methods used, quantitative research accounted for the majority of publications with 91.1%, whereas questionnaires were the most common among data collection methods (65.6%). Subjects enrolled in the studies included 20.0% general adults, 15.6% college students majoring in dental hygiene, 13.3% dental hygienists, and 10.0% adults with other occupations and non-major college students. Examining the data analysis methods applied revealed that regression analysis was the highest at 61.1% as a result of overlapping processing, followed by frequency analysis (54.4%), one-way batch variance analysis (48.9%), independent sample t-test (46.7%), and cross analysis (40.0%). This study analyzes the papers published in the Journal of KAIS and helps to set the direction of future dental hygiene research. We also establish the direction of research and provide a basis for the development of dental hygiene studies.