An Assessment on Graduate Public Relations Education in Turkey; Quantitative Content Analysis of the Contribution of Doctoral Dissertations to Public Relations (2008-2017)

Knowledge in the field of public relations has shown great development the last twenty years, in Turkey. Public relations, a powerful management function, proved rational in the profession, the private sector, public institutions and non-profit organizations. Public relations education began in the middle of the twentieth century, and this training has made a great progress towards the end of the century. Public relations education in Turkey is given density within the communication department. The quality of public relations education has been frequently discussed in recent years. In this study, a general evaluation was conducted both of undergraduate and undergraduate public relations education in Turkey. Then, in the field of public relations, quantitative content analysis of doctoral theses written between 2008-2017 was included. There are two main purposes of working. First, are quantitatively reveal the current state of public relations education in Turkey. The second is to classify the doctoral dissertations written in the field of public relations, and to determine the extent to which these dissertations contribute to the field. In this context, 240 doctoral dissertations written over the remaining ten years have been examined by quantitative content analysis technique. The research covered topics such as dissertations topics, distribution according to years, theses, universities, institutes, main branches of science and branches of science, language, gender. As a result, in recent years in the public relations field in undergraduate and graduate education it has been determined that Turkey experienced a significant increase. While the number of undergraduate studies in the field of public relations was found to be equal among the state and foundation universities, it was determined that the state universities were in the foreground in the graduate education. Almost all of the doctoral dissertations examined were found to be related to the public at state universities in terms of doctoral studies. When the subject distribution of the doctoral dissertations analyzed according to the research findings is examined, it is reached that the emphasis is given to the subjects related to the application of public relations.