The Application Of Knowledge Mapping In Military Psychology

On entering the21st century, the rising of information technique and Internetrevolution have led human to face the challenge of Big Data. On one hand, the opennessand accessibility of information make people‘s life convenient. On the other hand, theburst and explosion of information put too much burden on our cognitive ability. Theemerging of information visualization technique solved above problem. It can not onlytransform the fragment of information into a visualized map, but also turn the implicitknowledge hiding behind big data into the explicit knowledge which is easy to read.Eventually, information visualization technique can change the way how human perceivethe world.As a representative of information visualization technique, scientific knowledgemapping forms a visualized picture basing on the scientific knowledge, showing itsdevelopment trajectory and latent structure. Specifically, it can not only reveal the staticarchitecture of knowledge but also describe its temporary evolution.CiteSpace is the third generation information visualization technique, which is basedon the theories and methods of informatics, scientometrics and statistics. By theprocedures of data mining, data processing and map generation, CiteSpace can reveal theframework, structure, interaction, overlap, derivation of knowledge through visualized maps. Therefore, it‘s able to describe the tendency of a subject at a certain period, as wellas the evolution of research frontiersIn the opinion of this article, the external events such as wars, disasters, terroristattacks, together with the internal driving forces from the development of psychology,informatics and cognitive neuroscience, all push the transformation of military psychologyin research methods, paradigms and techniques. However, at present there are fewintegrated reviews of military psychology. Moreover, they were relatively out of date interms of research material and methods. Thus, it is the right time to use ScientificKnowledge Mapping, to analyze the intellectual bases, research hotspots and frontierfields of military psychology. Such research will advance our understanding in thedevelopment trajectory and the emerging tendency of military psychology.This study is based on16400articles from2004to2013in the―ISI Web of Science‖database (including SCI-E、SSCI), using―Military Psychology‖as the search term. Thepurpose of this study is to picture the framework and trajectory of international militaryresearch, in hope to get a complete view of this field. This study can be divided into fourparts, including the temporary and distribution domain of military psychology, the searchfor its intellectual bases, the analysis of research hotspots, and the prediction of frontierfields in military psychology.Results and analysis:1. Research on temporary and distribution domain of military psychology revealed thatthe following journals have provided immeasurable knowledge in the militarypsychology field, including―Psychological bulletin‖、―Journal of Personality andSocialPsychology‖、―Journal ofconsultingand clinicalpsychology‖,―The AmericanJournal of Psychiatry‖, etc. Though all these journals belong to the category ofpsychology, they also reflect different themes and focuses. It can be inferred thatmilitary psychology is characterized by various research topics and crucial researchmission.In addition, America is the pioneer of military psychology research worldwide. Twokinds of authors have made significant contributions to the development of military psychology. One is the American Psychiatric Association representing the clinicalpsychology branch. The other is Jacob Cohen, who represents the researchers ofstatistics and measurement.2. The search for intellectual bases of military psychology identified that clinicalpsychology and statistics as the foundation of this discipline. Researches of clinicalpsychology provided various theories, methods and techniques of psychologicalcounseling, crisis intervention, psychotherapy, etc. They can effectively alleviate themental illnesses and psychiatry disorders such as suicide, combat stress,post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. While, researches of statistics and measurementcome up with basic research methods such as moderator–mediator variable, multipleregression, statistical power analysis, common method biases, etc. These methodshave a great influence on data processing, scale composition and measurement revisein military psychology.3. The research hotspots of military psychology can be divided into four areas: the firstpart is psychometry, consisting of the keywords of meta-analysis, scale, reliability,validation, etc; the second part is clinical psychology, consisting of the keywords ofPTSD, abuse, depression, stress, mental-health, etc; the third part is social psychology,consisting of the keywords of domestic violence, risk factor, social support, veterans,etc; the fourth part is military information support operation, consisting of thekeywords of attitude, decision-making, information, performance, conflict. Theresearch hotspots suggest that military psychology is characterized by all-round,interdiscipline and multi-view features, which can not only promote soldiers‘efficiency but also protect their physical and psychological health.4. The analysis of frontier field of military psychology illustrated that the burst termssuch as organizational-commitment, job satisfaction, work overload, psychologicalproblems, personnel resources, military leadership and military training basicallycoincide with the three major research lines of soldier issue, leadership and training,which are advocated by U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and SocialSciences. On entering21century, frequent international conflicts and terrorist attacks have created three emerging frontier fields: field of clinical psychology such assuicide, combat stress, PTSD, etc.; field of organization psychology such asorganizational-commitment, job satisfaction, morale and cohesion, etc.; field ofsurvey of attitude and opinion of soldiers and commanders, such as negative attitude,career planning, marriage and family problems, etc.Innovation:1. Timespan: this study choose an appropriate period from2004to2013basing on theinternal and external factors which propel the development of military psychology anddraw the scientific knowledge map of international military psychology in recent tenyears.2. Research tool: this study brought a novel technique of knowledge visualization intomilitary psychology research, providing a new perspective of data mining and citationnetwork analysis.3. Application area: as far as we know, this study is the first research in China, even inthe world that applying CiteSpace to military psychology and therefore, lays thefoundation for future research.