Evaluation of the Distance Education Literature: a Content Analysis Using the Institute for Higher Education Policy Benchmarks and Selected Bibliometric Methods

The primary purpose of this study was to determine what 2000 IHEP benchmarks were found in the recent distance education. A secondary purpose of this study was to identify the publications, authors, patterns, and relationships among those publications that contributed to the current body of research in distance education. The literature sample consisted of 278 journal articles from The American Journal of Distance Education, Journal of Distance Education, Distance Education, and Open Learning for the time period 2002 through 2006. The reference lists of the 278 journal articles contained a total of 7,754 citations. First, a content analysis identified the IHEP benchmarks that were found in the recent distance education literature. Second, bibliometric methods were used to analyze the patterns and relationships existing in the distance education literature among the associated bibliographic data. The content analysis found three benchmarks which accounted for over 32 percent of the benchmarks found in the 278School of Teaching and Curriculum Leadershi