Senior Thesis Citation Behavior in the Classes of 1993 and 2004
Background Much has been written about the effect of computers, particularly the Internet, on undergraduate education and research. We are interested in exploring these phenomena using the senior theses of undergraduates in the School of Public and International Affairs at our institution. These students spend approximately six months working on a thesis on a topic of their choosing.
Method The present study will examine the bibliographies of all senior theses produced by the classes of 2004 and 1993 (total number of students=150 and preliminary work suggests each bibliography is about 10 pages). Articles will be coded into mutually-exclusive categories, as listed in Table 1. The number of pages in the thesis and name of advisor will also be recorded. Because of the policy focus of these papers, we included several categories not typically found in similar work. For example, because of our interest in the grey literature, we included a ‘think tank’ category and because many of our students conduct interviews, we included an ‘interview’ category.
Proposed Analyses This pilot study will tabulate the number of citations, the number of citations by category, and compare these distributions between the two years studied.
Table 1 Categories for Classifying Citations Book Book Chapter Conference Proceedings Data Dissertation Government Document (other than data or other category) Interview conducted by student Journal article Legislation Miscellaneous (brochure, fact sheet, application, Planning Commission Proposal) Newspaper Personal letter Popular Magazine Research Report Think Tank Report Trade Magazine Transcript of speech, lecture, interview Unpublished Material Working Paper