Public Relations Review 34 (2008) 312–314 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review Short communication MA and doctoral public relations research in Turkey (1984–2007): A quantitative study of dissertations contribution to public relations field Aydemir Okay ∗ , Ayla Okay 1 Istanbul University, Communication Faculty, 34119 Istanbul, Turkey article info Article history: Received 19 July 2007 Received in revised form 2 December 2007 Accepted 26 March 2008 Keywords: Public relations education Turkey MA and doctoral dissertations Quantitative research abstract In this article, MA and doctoral dissertations (673) on public relations written at Turkish universities (1984–2007) are examined in order to gain an understanding of the level of the theses within the discipline and that subjects are studied, too. The conclusion is that their contribution to public relations’ improvement and especially theory building has been negligible. Written theses are standing out the practical or operational, and no existence any dissertations related to public relations theory. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction There is postgraduate study about public relations in Turkey, offered by major universities, especially in metropolises. The purpose of this study is to identify, find the contribution to public relations field, and content analyze the stream of MA and doctoral theses which are written about public relations. 2. Method All of the MA and doctoral dissertations on public relations submitted at state and foundation universities in Turkey from 1984 (the date of the first thesis presented in the field Y ¨ OK Thesis Centrum catalog) to 2007 (1 April) partially were selected and total 673 theses were analyzed. We also selected those dissertations that make express reference to historical, theoretical, instrumental, strategic and tactical aspects of public relations, even when the name public relations is not explicitly used in titles. SPSS Version 11.5 for Windows is the statistical software used for data analysis. Firstly, the following keywords were used to identify the dissertations: public relations and communication sciences. In the second stage of this content analysis was to draw up a list of topics and categories in order to classify each of the theses studied. In this research, a coding sheet consisting of three categorical variables based on the existing literature were used. They are introspective dissertations, dissertations related to practice and application of public relations, and dissertations related to ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 212 440 00 00/12670. E-mail addresses: okayay@istanbul.edu.tr (A. Okay), aylaokay@istanbul.edu.tr (A. Okay). 1 Tel.: +90 212 440 00 00/12670. 0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2008.03.027