Trends in methodological and theoretical approaches to interpersonal health communication research

Abstract

Communication is an important tool used for dissemination of information in any health care setting. Smooth and uninterrupted doctor-patient communication is essential to a positive health outcome in medical practice. Studies have been carried out on this form of interpersonal communication by many researchers globally. This study examined the research methods adopted by some previous studies and the type of theories they adopted. One hundred and five full text journal articles published on doctor-patient communication over a period of twenty years from 1991 to 2010 were electronically and manually collected and examined for the study while content analyses of these articles was carried out. The study found that 51.4% of the articles employed qualitative methods, 18.1% adopted quantitative methods, and 30.5% adopted a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Under quantitative research methods, survey (30.97%) was the most frequently used approach. It was observed that, there has been a drift from quantitative to qualitative research methods in the study of doctor-patient communication research and there has been an insufficient use of theories to back up these studies in relation to doctor-patient communication.