The nature of the human resource development research–practice gap: Text data mining and topic modeling analysis of three decades of professional and academic literature from 1990 to 2022

The rapidly evolving field of Human Resource Development (HRD) places substantial importance and ongoing dialogue around the gap between research and practice. However, empirical studies addressing this crucial issue remain notably deficient. This dissertation helps fill this knowledge gap using quantitative descriptive analysis to explore topic representation and the change in topic prevalence over time in both professional and academic HRD journals. Utilizing structural topic modeling (STM) and a 50/50 training–test dataset split approach, this study scrutinizes latent topics and the prevalence in five HRD–related professional journals and five academic journals from 1990 to 2022. The results highlight the multifaceted, evolving, and dynamic nature of the gap between HRD research and practice. Key insights from this study reveal a significant overlap with core topics identified in previous HRD research, while offering broader coverage of topics compared to prior studies. In addition, this study suggests highly synchronized interest in 26 topics related to HRD research and practice in both professional and academic journal publications. The results also illustrate aligned interests with shifting priorities over time in 18 topics, while 16 topics showed substantial disparity between professional and academic journal publications. The topic trends uncovered in this study extend and challenge previous research. Some trends corroborate earlier studies on HRD research but provide fresh perspectives on the shifting prevalence of certain topics in professional journals. However, certain topic trends significantly deviate from earlier studies, suggesting inconsistencies among the various scholarly investigations. This study acknowledges the current undersupply and undervaluation of quantitative descriptive knowledge related to the HRD research-practice gap. By identifying and assessing topics across professional and academic journals over the past three decades, this dissertation provides a nuanced descriptive evaluation of the HRD research–practice gap, providing a more comprehensive understanding of this pivotal phenomenon.

Author dc:creator

• Feng, Ying

• HRD research–practice gap
• professional journals
• structural topic modeling
• topics
• trends

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/11299/258734

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:conservancy.umn.edu:11299/258734