A Constructivist Approach to Analyzing Historical Documents & Materials

Identification, selection and preservation of documents and materials that are part of the history of the health education profession are lacking. Since the history of health education is an important but often overlooked aspect of professional preparation, legitimate research approaches must be established to bring other scholars to the field. Since qualitative research offers an opportunity for in-depth examination of information, a thematic textual analysis method was selected and developed. This qualitative inquiry method lends itself favorably to the analysis of health education documents and materials. The origin and rationale for this method will be discussed. This particular research process emerged from the data and was developed to achieve the desired outcome instead of being clearly identified prior to data collection as is the more common approach used in quantitative research. In the original project, we constructed a contextual and thematic method of analysis to aid in the documentation and interpretation of health education conference themes over the past 35 years across four professional organizations (AAHE, SOPHE, ASHA, and APHA). Application of the thematic textual analysis method is currently underway examining the Children Picture Book Database at Miami University, the McGuffey Readers, and other selected health education curricula. Thematic textual analysis can be used to analyze topics, concepts, and skills for curriculum studies in health education. This approach also may encourage the collection and documentation of constructed data and public sharing of documents and materials for historical preservation and continue to strengthen and advance the health education profession.