ANALYSIS OF DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS IN CONSTRUCTION SCIENCES IN TURKEY

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine doctoral dissertations in Construction Sciences in the academic literature within the scope of Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education and to reveal the researchers’ profile with a view to contributing to the evolving research agenda in Turkey. For this purpose quantitative analyses of doctoral dissertations in Construction Sciences in Turkey is made. The study constitutes 321 doctoral dissertations completed between 1990-2017, which are archived in the database of the Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education and indexed under the subject construction sciences. All of the doctoral dissertations included in the sample were analyzed using various standards such as the years they were completed, the language they were written in, the university they were completed in, the gender of the author, and the advisor’s title. In addition, the theses were examined in terms of their research area. The collected data was analyzed with descriptive statistical methods and “word clouds” from keywords of dissertations. According to the results, it was found out that the highest number of dissertations produced was in the Building Physics and Project Management discipline, by mostly female researchers, with dissertation supervisors who were mostly professors, while Turkish was the most used language. Research results also show that researchers mostly focuses on energy, earthquake, fire, wood, housing and sustainability themes.