Research Trends and Practices in Philippine Public Administration: A Content Analysis of the Philippine Journal of Public Administration, 1990-2019

While the Philippine public administration (PA) research has a long and productive history, research trends and practices in Philippine PA are seldom the subject of recent empirical research. This study aims to fill this literature gap on trends in the study of Philippine PA and governance, as represented in the Philippine Journal of Public Administration. It also describes temporal shifts in research approaches, focus, and citation practices. With content analysis as the principal method of inquiry and analysis, the study examines the following areas of PJPA articles published between 1990 and 2019: article attributes, profile of contributors, methodology, geographic focus, topic or subject area, and citation practices. The study uses data historicization, cross-tabulation, and descriptive statistics. Results show that some research topics have been consistent for the last three decades, while others were popular only in the 1990s and 2000s; others found resurgence or currency only recently, or are under-examined or nascent. Others have become less studied or are neglected as a field of study. Consistent with those found in the literature, qualitative studies continue to dominate the journal, but the proportion of quantitative articles has seen a steady increase in the last three decades. Similarly, collaborative practice in the journal is slowly increasing, but geographical diversity is found wanting. The trends also corroborate previous empirical findings on the dwindling contribution from PA practitioners in recent decades, and the underrepresentation of female authors in PA scholarship. In the latter, the publication rate of women in the PJPA is slightly higher compared with those found in the literature.