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5 - The sample

Sections:

5.1   Selection criteria
5.2   Sample size

5.1 Selection criteria

All passed M.A. theses are catalogued and at least one copy held in the University of Auckland General Library. The sample consists of all the 1996 theses held (as of 1st March 1997) with at least 5 theses in their subject, for that year.

These theses were originally found by Keyword search in NOTIS,[87] with several checks to catch records that may have been misloaded.[88]   Each record was pasted into a text file and sorted by subject. This provisional list was then checked against the Acquisitions Department's data base of theses submitted to the library, as well as Information Services' own thesis database. No additional items were found in the two databases.

From this point all theses were borrowed and physically inspected to insure that each was actually:

• presented in 1996,
• in the subject stated,
• submitted for the M.A. degree[89]
• not embargoed, since this fact may be omitted from the holding record.

When there were more than five theses in a subject, the bibliographies were photocopied to act as tally sheets (see §7.1 below). It was suspected that subjects with fewer theses represented an insufficiently significant sample of citations for the distinct pattern of that subject to emerge.

5.2 Sample size

There were 56 theses, in 6 subjects, which matched the criteria (see the appendix for the complete list).

	subject	quantity
Humanities	English	5
	History	5
		subtotal = 10
Social Sciences	Anthropology	5
	Education	20
	Political Studies	5
	Psychology	16
		subtotal = 46
		Total = 56

Footnotes to Chapter 5

87.  The actual search was K= THESIS MA AUCKLAND 1996, since each catalogues thesis has a 502 note field in a uniform format; e.g., Thesis (MA--Education)--University of Auckland, 1996.

88.  Since earlier theses have had the unsearchable phrase M.A. in the notes field (rather than MA), I worked back through the latest hits to the search K = THESIS AUCKLAND NOT PHD NOT MSC NOT MA NOT MJUR NOT ME NOT MLITT NOT MPHIL NOT BARCH NOT MHSC NOT MARCH NOT MCOM NOT MED NOT MMUS NOT LLM .

89.  In fact one thesis was wrongly catalogued as Thesis (MA--Education), instead of Thesis (MEd).