The Health Belief Model (HBM): a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The objective of this work was to analyze from the bibliometric point of view the literature on topics of the Health Belief Model, from 1974 to 2019. The methodological approach to this research was a literature review process in the Web of Science (WOS) database, with the phrase "health belief model" is used. On the results, the bibliometric analysis was used in the variables types of documents, time, types of journals, co-authors, countries and keywords. The review showed a total of 2,832 studies, where it was found that the majority of articles are in journals, summaries of scientific papers, with a large amount of research carried out in the last decade, which makes it a current working model, the journals where most articles are identified were about preventive health, education and psychology, the main author according to h-index is Wang with an index of 146.The countries that lead this type of research are the United States and Iran, unfortunately no country from Latin America appears on this list. Finally, it is concluded the health belief model is very much in force, as it could be seen in the growth of the last decade in first world countries such as the United States, Iran and the People's Republic of China, and where authors with Oriental surnames like Wang and Sun lead research.