Bibliography profiling of undergraduate theses in a professional psychology program

Abstract

The bibliographic profi le of 125 undergraduate (licentiate)theses was analyzed, describing absolutequantities of several bibliometric variables, as wellas within-document indexes and average lags of thereferences. The results show a consistent patternacross the years in the 6 cohorts included in thesample (2001-2007), with variations, which fallwithin the robust confi dence intervals for the globalcentral tendency. The median number of referencesper document was 52 (99% CI 47-55); the medianpercentage of journal articles cited was 55%, with amedian age for journal references of 9 years. Otherhighlights of the bibliographic profi le were the useof foreign language references (median 61%), andlow reliance on open web documents (median 2%).A cluster analysis of the bibliometric indexes resultedin a typology of 2 main profi les, almost evenlydistributed, one of them with the makeup of a naturalscience bibliographic profi le and the secondwithin the style of the humanities. In general, thenumber of references, proportion of papers, andage of the references are close to PhD dissertationsand Master theses, setting a rather high standard forundergraduate theses.

Keywords

• licentiate thesis
• undergraduate thesis
• bibliographic profi le
• bibliometric indexes
• robust confidence intervals
• bootstrap
• cluster analysis