This study aimed to analyze research trends in depression among Korean university students over the past decade using a big data–driven topic modeling approach. To conduct the analysis, 803 articles published from 2015 to 2024 were retrieved from three major Korean academic databases, namely DBpia, KCI, and RISS. After data preprocessing and synonym/stopword adjustments, 1,971 valid keywords were extracted. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was performed using NetMiner 4.5.1 to identify latent topics and temporal changes. The analysis identified three major topics: (1) Psychosocial Stress and Emotional Well-being, focusing on stress, anxiety, self-esteem, and interpersonal relationships; (2) Health and Pandemic-related Issues in Nursing Students, highlighting mental health concerns of nursing students, particularly during COVID-19; and (3) Social Support, Life Satisfaction, and Digital Influence, emphasizing social connectedness, quality of life, and the impact of smartphone addiction. The distribution of topics revealed that pandemic-related research (Topic-2) increased significantly after 2020, while social support and digital environment studies (Topic-3) relatively declined. These findings demonstrate that university student depression research in Korea has evolved around psychosocial, pandemic-related, and social/digital dimensions. The study highlights the academic value of topic modeling in mapping research landscapes and suggests the need for multidimensional interventions, ranging from individual stress management to structural support for specific student subgroups.
목차
Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Research Purpose 3. Methods 3.1 Research design 3.2 Study subjects 3.3 Data collection 3.4 Data preprocessing 4. Results 4.1 Annual research trends in studies on university student depression 4.2 Keyword frequency analysis of domestic research on university student depression 4.3 Keyword network analysis of university student depression research 4.4 Interpretation of topic modeling results 4.5 Changes in topic proportions by period 5. Discussion 6. Conclusions References