A Content Analysis of Subject Areas and Research Methods Used in Five Hospitality Management Journals

An examination of past research efforts provides an understanding of research direction and boundaries of a field or discipline. This study reports the findings of content analysis performed on 1,073 main articles published in five primary hospitality management journals for a 7-year period (1990-1996) based on both subject areas focused and research methods used. The findings revealed some shifts in subject areas and statistical techniques used over the years as well as the orientation of selected hospitality journals. Most articles focused on human resource area and lodging and food service industry segment combined. Survey method was the most frequently employed research design, including nonprobability sampling techniques, whereas field studies and experiments were the least used ones. Studies using multivariate or inferential statistics showed incremental increase over the period studied, although majority of studies used descriptive and univariate statistics.