Many Papers but Limited Policy Impact? A Bibliometric Review of Physical Activity Research

Scientific publications on physical activity (PA) have proliferated in recent years. Previous work has shown that descriptive studies dominate the literature with disappointingly fewer studies reporting on interventions or dissemination. This study updates trends in PA research to determine changes, if any, in publications that are more likely to contribute to facilitating research translation to scale-up interventions that might influence population levels of PA. A bibliometric review of a random sample of published PA studies (n = 4069) across three periods (2008-2009, 2013-2014, and 2017-2018) was conducted using the SCOPUS database. A four-stage coding strategy was used, including 1) identifying PA as exposure or primary outcome, 2) classifying PA studies into data-based and non-data-based studies, 3) classifying data-based PA studies into intervention and nonintervention studies, and 4) classifying intervention studies into six research translation categories. Descriptive PA studies dominated in all three time periods (52.1%-61.9%). Intervention studies increased only slightly from 14.8% to 19.2%. Within intervention studies, most focused on testing efficacy or effectiveness, and these increased over time across the time periods from 38% to 50.5%. Research relevant for scale-up such as replication and dissemination studies declined from the first to the most recent period (28.1% to 16.7%). The prevailing trend of descriptive studies and efficacy and/or effectiveness studies on a small scale continues in published PA literature, contrary to the increasing recognition of the need for scale-up and dissemination research. More dissemination research is required to translate known efficacious interventions to population-level implementation. There is a need for cultural shifts in research where real-world impact on population health should be valued more than the volume of publications.