An Analytical Study of Research Trends on Physical Disabilities -with Doctoral Dissertations from 2006 to 2010-

An Analytical Study of Research Trends on Physical Disabilities -with Doctoral Dissertations from 2006 to 2010-

This paper set the following concrete research questions to understand research trends of physical disabilities and get basic materials to guide studies on physical disabilities. Research question is consist of three Fisrt, what were the subjects of doctoral theses on physical disabilities in Korea from 2006 to 2010? Second., what were the σends of doctoral theses on physical disabilities by the type of theses in Korea from 2006 to 2010? Third., what were the trends of doctoral theses on physical disabilities by themes of theses in Korea from 2006 to 2010? The results are as follows. First, from the viewpoint of special education, there were no studies on preschool students since 2007. So studies on physical disabilities in the area of early childhood special education are required. From the view of welfare for the disabled, the subjects of research were mainly adults not school age children and typical case of brain lesions on Welfare Act for Disabled was stroke. Second, when the theses were analyzed by the type, theses of intervention study were 36 (46.8%) and survey research was 16 (20.8%). Other studies which are not based on qualitative research cannot be considered quantitative research, but intervention study and survey research are the typical cases of quantitative research and these two types of research comprised 67.6% of theses anlayzed. Third, when the theses were analyzed by the theme of research, most of studies were on physical activities.