Citation Analysis of Master Dissertations at the Central University of Technology, South Africa

Abstract

Data must be given context to become information. Information must be given meaning to become knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, can only become wisdom if applied correctly. Data from postgraduate dissertations, including an analysis of the types of citations used, can give rise to information that can subsequently contribute to knowledge and wisdom. This type of analysis is warranted, as it has been reported that poor references are a common fault in dissertations. The purpose of this article is to analyse 157 Master dissertations from 19 different disciplines that were completed over a 10-year period at one university in order to identify the types and the trends of the citations used in order to highlight any major concerns with regard to credibility. An ex-post facto study is used where citation analysis is used to obtain quantitative data. Results reveal that 17063 citations were used in total, where the disciplines of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology had the highest number of internetbased sources, as compared to journal articles and books. Engineering postgraduate students also used a fewer number of citations (average of 60 per dissertation) as compared to students in Humanities (103 citations per dissertation), Environmental Sciences (138 citations per dissertation) and Management (121 citations per dissertation). The use of Wikipedia was limited to 79 citations, of which almost 50% was found in Electrical Engineering. An important implication of this research is that it may help postgraduate students to select more credible sources for their citations, formatting them more correctly so as to easily identify their types. This in turn may have a bearing on improving the quality of their dissertations that may ease the examination process.