The Journal of Health and Social Behavior is a quarterly peer-reviewed

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

 academic journal

Academic journal

An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...

 published by the American Sociological Association

American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...

. It publishes "empirical and theoretical articles that apply sociological

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 concepts and methods to the understanding of health and illness and the organization of medicine and health care."

The immediate past editor-in-chief is Eliza Pavalko, the current editor in chief is Debra Umberson (University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

).

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in Ageline

EBSCO Publishing

EBSCO Publishing, headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is an aggregator of premium full-text content. EBSCO Publishing's core business is providing online databases via EBSCOhost to libraries worldwide. EBSCOhost is used by libraries, schools, academic institutions, medical institutions, and...

, Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts, ERIC

Education Resources Information Center

ERIC - the Education Resources Information Center - is an online digital library of education research and information. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education...

, JSTOR

JSTOR

JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...

, MEDLINE

MEDLINE

MEDLINE is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care...

, PsycINFO

PsycINFO

PsycINFO is a database of abstracts of literature in the field of psychology. It is produced by the American Psychological Association and distributed on the association's and through third-party vendors. It is the electronic version of the now-ceased Psychological Abstracts...

, Science Citation Index

Science Citation Index

The Science Citation Index is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information and created by Eugene Garfield in 1960, which is now owned by Thomson Reuters. The larger version covers more than 6,500 notable and significant journals, across 150 disciplines, from ...

, Scopus

Scopus

Scopus, officially named SciVerse Scopus, is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It covers nearly 18,000 titles from over 5,000 international publishers, including coverage of 16,500 peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical, medical,...

, and Social Sciences Citation Index

Social Sciences Citation Index

Social Sciences Citation Index is an interdisciplinary citation index product of Thomson Reuters' Healthcare & Science division. It was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index....

. According to the Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Healthcare & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It has been integrated with the Web of Knowledge, by Thomson Reuters, and is accessed from the Web of Science to JCR Web. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and...

, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior's 2010 impact factor

Impact factor

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...

is 2.18, ranking it 9 out of 56 titles in the category "Psychology, Social" and 24 out of 114 titles in "Public, Environmental & Occupational Health."