Abstract

ROBLES, Jaime R.; CSOBAN-MIRKA, Eugenia  and  VARGAS-IRWIN, Cristina. Bibliography profiling of undergraduate theses in a professional psychology program. Av. Psicol. Latinoam. [online]. 2010, vol.28, n.1, pp.12-28. ISSN 1794-4724.

The bibliographic profile of 125 undergraduate (licentiate) theses was analyzed, describing absolute quantities of several bibliometric variables, as well as within-document indexes and average lags of the references. The results show a consistent pattern across the years in the 6 cohorts included in the sample (2001-2007), with variations, which fall within the robust confidence intervals for the global central tendency. The median number of references per document was 52 (99% CI 47-55); the median percentage of journal articles cited was 55%, with a median age for journal references of 9 years. Other highlights of the bibliographic profile were the use of foreign language references (median 61%), and low reliance on open web documents (median 2%). A cluster analysis of the bibliometric indexes resulted in a typology of 2 main profiles, almost evenly distributed, one of them with the makeup of a natural science bibliographic profile and the second within the style of the humanities. In general, the number of references, proportion of papers, and age of the references are close to PhD dissertations and Master theses, setting a rather high standard for undergraduate theses.

Keywords : licentiate thesis; undergraduate thesis; bibliographic profile; bibliometric indexes; robust confidence intervals; bootstrap; cluster analysis.

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