ABSTRACT

Objective: The purpose of this study is to analyze the keywords related to occupational therapy on popular web sites of major portal sites. According to an analysis of the most frequent keywords, we tried to describe the state and general awareness of occupational therapy in Korea. Methods: For this purpose, news, blogs, cafes, and Jishik-in/Daum tips provided by Naver, Daum, and Google were selected as channels for analysis. The keyword to be extracted from texts in these channels was “occupational therapy.” The semantic network including degree centrality, betweenness centrality, community, and co-current words were analyzed using the Netminer program (ver. 4). Only nouns were subjected to the analyses. Results: “Occupational therapy” (14,624), “therapy” (13,530), “occupation” (7,470), “hospital” (4,618), “occupational therapist” (3,612), and “rehabilitation” (3,193) were the top-5 frequently appearing keywords. There were similar results in the degree centrality and the betweenness centrality. Occupational therapy/physical therapy (997), convalescence/hospital (783), occupational therapy/speech therapy (564), and occupational therapy/program (510) were shown in most of the frequent co-current keywords. Seven groups were clustered in the community analysis. Conclusion: Through this study, it was found that occupational therapy is recognized as a “rehabilitation” for “disabled people” in “hospitals” in Korea, and the role of occupational therapy for “dementia” is expected. The recognition that it is closely related to other rehabilitation areas suggests that occupational therapy needs to establish its status in the rehabilitation field.