Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to understand the trend and central concept of domestic researches on laughter therapy. For the analysis, this study used total 72 theses verified by inputting the keyword 'laughter therapy' from 2007 to 2021. Research design, data and methodology: This study performed the development and analysis of keyword co-occurrence network, analyzed the types of researches through topic modeling, and verified the visualized word cloud and sociogram. The keyword data that was cleaned through preprocessing, was analyzed in the method of centrality analysis and topic modeling through the 1-mode matrix conversion process by using the NetMiner (version 4.4) Program. Results: The keywords that most appeared for last 14 years were laughter therapy, depression, the elderly, and stress. The five topics analyzed in thesis data from 2007 to 2021 were therapy, cognitive behavior, quality of life, stress, and the elderly. Conclusions: This study understood the flow and trend of research topics of domestic laughter therapy for last 14 years, and there should be continuous researches on laughter therapy, which reflects the flow of time in the future.