The Studies on Educational Digital Games Regarding Children: A New Word Analysis Approach

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to investigate, through data analysis, the studies conducted on the use of educational digital games by children. As part of this study, a search of the Science Direct, Web of Science, and ERIC databases was performed to identify the studies on this topic published within the last decade (2007 and 2017). From this database search, a total of 403 studies related to educational science and including the keywords “child” and “game” were retrieved. Proceedings and book reviews were omitted from the scope of the study. The articles were downloaded in PDF document format and then extracted as text to the MySQL database through the Python programming language. The articles that were not related to digital games, that used physical games, or that were inconsistent with the purposes of this study in terms of target group were excluded. After the elimination process, a total of 103 articles constituted the sample of the study. In the data analysis, the most repeated words, word pairs, and abbreviations were tallied using Python programming language. In addition, the keywords qualitative, quantitative, experimental study, and control group, which were preselected by the researcher, were searched and recorded. The results revealed that different descriptions were applied for the concept of educational digital games (e.g., digital games, computer games, game-based learning, video games, and serious games). A prodigious number of studies were listed in the search of the current databases, a situation which can result in significant time loss for researchers.