An Analysis of Master Dissertations: A Case Study of Central University of Technology, South Africa

Abstract

Knowledge is built on the foundation of information which may be gathered from various sources, including from dissertations. Gathering information from postgraduate dissertations can highlight the differences between, and in, disciplines, with regard to specific variables. Moreover, it has been reported that African postgraduate students struggle to complete their dissertations, as they do not know how to structure them correctly, which may include not knowing how many words, pages, images and tables to include in their dissertations. The purpose of this article is to analyse 157 Master dissertations spanning a 10-year period in order to identify the average number of supervisors, words, pages, images and tables that have been used in successful research studies in order to highlight the differences between disciplines and to provide a guideline regarding the average length of a standard dissertation. An ex-post facto study is employed where informetric analysis is used to obtain quantitative data. Results reveal that the five variables vary dramatically per faculty. Management Sciences produced the highest number of average words (40 467), the highest number of average pages (194) and the highest number of average tables (28), while Engineering produced the highest number of average images (53) per dissertation. Health and Environmental Sciences had the highest average number of supervisors (2.2) per dissertation. An important implication of this research is that it may help postgraduate students to better understand how to structure their dissertations when considering their length. A key recommendation is to include the results of this study in brochures which are distributed to postgraduate students at the start of their studies, giving them a better idea of the differences between, and in, disciplines with regard to the number of supervisors and the length of a standard dissertation.