An investigation on master dissertations in social studies educati̇on and in 2008-2014 years in terms of thematic and methodology

The purpose of this study is to investigate the general trends of master dissertations writtten in Social Studies Education and performed in 2008-2014 years in terms of thematic and methodology. Document analysis was employed in study. The study group was included in all the masters thesis recorded at thesis database of Higher Education Council. Through this database, we obtained 423 thesis permitted to open access just in 15.07.2015 without using any a sampling method. For data analysis, descriptive analysis was used. Accordingly, 423 master thesis were classfied into themes by the subjects. Then, methodological processes such as the research method, the audience, the sampling method, the sampling size, the data collection tool, the statistical and qualitative data analysis methods, and the studies of validity and reliability used in research were examined using frequency and percentile. The findings of this study indicate that the theme most studied is about teaching, strategy, methods, and techniques; the research method most used is survey method; as the audience, thesis mostly rely on middle school students. Random sampling method was used mostly; the data collection tool mostly used is questionnaire. It reveals also an evidence that expert opinion was employed for validation and Cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated for reliability at most. Furhermore, findings display that researchers have used t tests and descriptive statistics in their master thesis. Key words: Social studies, Master thesis, Methodology, Document analysis