Analysis of master theses written in quantitative methods in Türkiye by using text mining

The main objective of this thesis is to examine the reflections and development of the field of quantitative methods in master thesis topics in Turkey. For this purpose, 341 master theses prepared in the field of quantitative methods in the Department of Business Administration between 2015 and 2025, accessible through the YÖK National Thesis Center website, were included in the review and analyzed using Text Mining methods. The study first explains the concept of text mining, its application areas, processes, and general information related to text mining. The following section presents studies conducted using text mining methods. In the analyses, the Orange DataMining Program was used to improve data quality and classification accuracy due to the nature of the program and the advantages of its included plugins. The data from the theses accessed through the YÖK National Thesis Center website (titles, keywords, abstracts, etc.) were transferred to an Excel worksheet, and topic modeling was performed using the LDA algorithm via the Orange DataMining program. By analyzing thesis abstracts and keywords using the Orange data mining platform and applying topic modeling with the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm, the study determined the conceptual structure and thematic distribution of the literature. The results revealed that the most frequently used terms in thesis are closely related to quantitative research applications such as analysis, data, method, model, decision, and outcome. These findings indicate that master research in this field strongly emphasizes experimental analysis and analytical modeling. As a result of the LDA analysis, ten dominant themes emerged, including modeling and product-oriented approaches, financial and technological analyses, data analysis and application studies, performance and value management, service quality and customer orientation, management and business processes, decision-making and problem-solving, variable-based relationship studies, information systems and analytics, and market and economic analysis. These themes demonstrate that research conducted within quantitative methods programs is not limited solely to methodological studies but also extends to various functional areas of business management. Another finding of the study is the clustering of concepts around three main axes: strategic, operational/managerial, and customer-oriented. This structure reflects the multifaceted nature of business and business management research. Methodologically, this study also demonstrates the usefulness of text mining techniques in the analysis of large academic document sets.