A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF TURKISH DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS IN PUBLIC RELATIONS

There are almost 60 faculties of communications in Turkey. These faculties are able to hold doctoral programs when they employ enough lecturers. When looked at the database of theses in the Higher Education Institution, it can be clearly seen that there are few theses in the field of public relations. However, there is no study about what kind of contributions these theses, especially the doctoral ones which require a model or proposal, make. Therefore, in this study, 110 doctoral theses done on public relations between the years 2010-2015 are analyzed in terms of research model, style of data acquisition, methods of data analysis, subject headings, wording, history of the thesis advisors and gender. It is determined at the end of this analysis that these theses are far from coming up with a theory, are pursuers of the American School and they use similar research methods in the determination of situations that already exist. The universities and the Higher Education Institution of the country must develop some new policies in order for the doctoral theses to contribute to science.