Writing About Australian Educational and Developmental Psychology: A 25 Year Retrospective Summary

Abstract

This research is a summary of the published research interests of Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologists over the past 25 years. The terms used in the title and keywords describing research published in The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist (AEDP) over the past 25 years were analysed. In total, 105 individual words or terms were derived from 233 articles published in the AEDP. These words and terms were used 707 times as title words and 820 times as keywords to describe the research of the journal. The most frequent individual title words were children (n = 70), adolescents (n = 44), assessment (n = 29), development/developmental (n = 28), and disability (n = 27). The reduction of these title words and keywords resulted in six categories: Stages of Development, Relating and Roles, Educational and Vocational, Presenting Problems—Clinical, Presenting Problems—General, and Methods and Practice. Analyses of the frequency of the title words and keywords led to the conclusion that many of the words and the subsequent categories were exclusively Educational and Developmental in definition, with a large proportion of the content of the journal also shared with other specialisations and areas of psychology. Finally, the title words and keywords were subdivided into 5-year periods and small, significant effects were found between the five time periods for some categories of keywords and terms. The differences were very weak and non-systematic, trends indicating the relative consistency of the contents of the journal over time.