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Building identity via topical coverage of the IS field: subject analysis of master and doctoral thesis from the Department of Information Sciences at University of Zadar

Building identity via topical coverage of the IS field: subject analysis of master and doctoral thesis from the Department of Information Sciences at University of Zadar. Introduction The bachelor, master and doctoral thesis cover the name of the extended research paper which is obligatory for most undergraduate, master and doctoral study programs as a proof of gaining diploma. There are several definitions, but all of them agree upon the all types of thesis being ‘a serious’ research paper containing all elements of the research paper. At the University of Zadar, Information Science Department, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students are obligated to write and defend their bachelor/master/docotral thesis in order to obtain their degree. Topics of the thesis are covering the wide field of information and communication sciences. Since the field of information and communication sciences is rather wide, Information Science Department’s study programs are focused on librarianship, archives, museology, information systems and informatology but also covers interdisciplinary topics. Topics of the thesis were also often driven by the areas of expertise and interests of the mentors and therefore there are certain amount of topics which are outside of LIS field. Research questions The aim of this research is: 1. To research in which subfields of information and communication sciences are most thesis defended between 2008 and 2019 at the Department of Information Sciences, University of Zadar written. 2. To find topical distribution of thesis within the information and communication sciences field found in master and doctoral thesis defended between 2008 and 2019 at the Department of Information Sciences, University of Zadar. 3. To determine which are the prevailing research methods used in master and doctoral thesis in the chosen sample. Methodology and procedures Sample for this research contains all master and doctoral thesis defended at the Department of Information Sciences, between 2008 and 2019. Titles, keywords and abstracts are extracted and imported into a table. Each title is a) labeled with the subfield of the information and communication science ; b) indexed by keywords written by authors of the thesis ; c) indexed by three individual professionals using adapted classification scheme written by Järvelin and Vakkari (1993), and recently adapted by Tuomaala, Järvelin and Vakkari (2014). Topical and content analysis is going to be done by three professionals and their agreement on the topic and/or field will be crucial for the title to be accepted as correctly indexed and classified. Since the classification scheme is meant for a much diverse data set, it was adapted to meet the need of this analysis. Area of interdisciplinary was added to the scheme to accommodate thesis written with the equal perspectives from two or more fields (besides information and communication sciences). Within topics/domains, each thesis is analyzed by the methodology and research methods used in it in order to make connections between subfield, topics and chosen methods, if possible. Research Results & Discussion Results of this research will show if there is a dominant subfield in which most thesis are written, and which topics and subjects are more ‘popular’ among students. Besides topical coverage, this research will show what methodology and research methods are used and which are underused. Since similar research was done at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Zagreb, results can be compared in order to show differences between researched samples. Results will show general coverage of topics within the information and communication sciences field which can be seen as a starting point for future topics of master and doctoral thesis. Conclusion Based on results, it will be possible to gain insight into the wide range of topics covered in final thesis at the Department of Information Sciences in Zadar, and it can be used as a guidance to which areas or topics to give more attention in the future in order to cover wide range of the field. At the other hand, it will indicate which topics are more ‘popular’ and might be a good starting point to look for the reason for that. Methodology and research methods found prevailing in master and doctoral thesis can be seen as a proof of how ‘important’ research methods are in the program itself. ‘Missing’ topics and subfields within the domain will be brought to light and it will be possible to direct future thesis in underrepresented topics.

subject analysis ; master and doctoral thesis topics ; topical analysis ; methodology

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