A bibliometric analysis of postgraduate theses publishe under the title of environmental in Turkey

The politicization of environmental issues has developed different perspectives on environmental problems and solutions to environmental problems at both global and national levels and has played an important role in the proliferation of studies dealing with different aspects of the environment. Especially in recent years, original scientific and technology-oriented studies that offer solutions with analytical approaches have become widespread and bibliometric studies, one of the most important reference sources of science policies, have come to the fore. The main purpose of this study is to bibliometrically examine the postgraduate theses on "environment" between 1986 and 2023. For this purpose, the Higher Education Council Thesis Center (YÖK) database was used. In this database, 1260 graduate theses, which were accessed by using the keyword "environment" and directly related to environmental issues, were analyzed. SSPS (V.26) package program and X2 test were used to analyze the data. According to the results of the analysis, 80,8% (1018) of the 1260 research are in the field of master's degree and 19,2% (242) are in the field of doctorate. It has been observed that theses published on environmental issues have been in a continuous increasing trend both in terms of quality and quantity from 1986 to 2023. The university with the highest number of theses published is METU (179 theses), the institute is Institute of Social Sciences (449 theses), and the faculty is İİBF (312 theses). Within the field of science, Engineering and Architecture (482 theses) ranks first. In addition, out of 1260 postgraduate studies, 447 studies (35.5%) were quantitative field research, while 232 studies (18.41%) were on environmental education in the field of environmental education and attitude and behavior change in creating environmental awareness. Climate change and sustainability issues are ranked lower in the ranking. As can be seen, this research allows the studies conducted in the field of the environment to be gathered under a single roof and allows researchers to access a large amount of data through a single source.